


your soul is changing

by kafkian



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brief suicidal ideation, Dennis POV, Eating Disorders, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Jealousy, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Season/Series 12, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-11 22:41:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 41,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15325989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kafkian/pseuds/kafkian
Summary: Dennis comes back.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so. I have been working on this for mumble mumble months now and seeing as we're gonna have New Content in September (!!!!!!!!!!!!) I thought it was about time I started posting it, although everyone and their mums have already written a version of this. I can't TELL you how long I have spent primping this fucker. Dennis is such a drama queen. 
> 
> Note the tags; this one's a little angstier than my other Sunny fic. It's macdennis endgame - I wouldn't do you dirty like that - but it does take some time to get there. It'll be explicit in later chapters and I'll flag that up in the A/N. I'll update every Tuesday. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> The title is from Kesha's Praying, don't @ me.

Dennis _loves_ North Dakota.

He loves the tidiness of it, the moderation, the calm. He loves how quiet it is, even in the centre city: the way no drunken assholes yell at you in the street. He loves the way Brian Junior smiles at him when Dennis picks him up from pre-school. He loves the way the hesitance in Mandy’s expression has faded slowly, gradually, into acceptance. He loves how she expects him to be there now when she opens the door, how she introduces him to her friends as Brian Junior’s father; it feels like she’s giving him something every time she says it, even though it’s nothing but the truth.

He loves the distance, cold and clean, from his life in Philadelphia. He loves the way the gang grasped almost immediately that Dennis didn’t want anything more to do with them, and stopped texting. He loves that Dee hasn’t called him since the week he settled in, and that Charlie stopped texting him emojis in the same breath as she stopped picking up the phone. He loves that he hasn’t heard Mac’s voice for six goddamn months, and that the last thing he said to him was cruel, and that none of them know if he’s even alive or dead. He loves that – it’s total freedom, total release in favour of the life he’d always envisioned for himself. Why wouldn’t he? He loves it so much he’s smoking more than he ever has done before in his life just to cope with finally getting everything he wants. He loves it so much he can’t leave his hotel room in the evenings after he drives back from Mandy’s, just lies on his hotel bed and stares up at the ceiling, paralysed with love. 

Above everything else, Dennis _loves_ going to therapy.

\---

Okay, so that last one was a lie. And the first one. And maybe some of the ones in between. Not the ones about Brian Junior, those were true. But most of them – most of them were lies.

The thing is, Dennis can’t exactly go back on it now. He made a decision and God help him, he’s going to stick with it, even if it’s just to prove to everyone who doubted him that he’s capable after all of doing something selfless. He’s not even saying he’d take an out if it was offered with no consequences; Brian Junior is and will remain his son, and Dennis can’t just up and leave him without a father, no matter the cost. But Karen his therapist has suggested to him multiple times, in that civil tone she uses to disguise the fact that she thinks Dennis is a complete fucking moron, that he might want to work on how much he lies to himself. And every time he tries to explain to her that it’s not _lying,_ exactly, it’s just phrasing things in binary opposition to how they actually are, she just cocks her head at him like he’s a monkey at the zoo.

‘It makes perfect sense to me,’ he’d muttered in their first session. ‘It’s not my fault you’ve yet to reach my intellectual level. You did go to college, right?’

‘I did,’ she said implacably. ‘As you know full well, Dennis. That’s the third time you’ve brought that up in –’ she checks her watch ‘– less than twenty minutes. Is college a source of anxiety for you?’

‘How the fuck would I know?’ Dennis had snarled, and then it kind of went downhill from there.

Not that he was allowed to stop going, no matter how rude and invasive Karen’s questions. Oh no, once Mandy had cottoned onto just how borderline and addictive his personality ran she’d made it a condition of Dennis’s contact with Brian Junior. Apologetically, of course, but firmly. And wasn’t that just the icing on the cake? Dennis had been willing to throw in the towel on his entire life in Philly, fly across the country and build a new one from the ground up at the ripe old age of forty-one, all with the bare minimum of panic attacks, but _therapy_ , Jesus Christ. Living out of a suitcase in a shitty hotel had nothing on weekly sessions with Karen of the beady eyes and take-no-bullshit pixie cut.

It would be fine if he could just talk about the _now_ , that’s all – if she’d just let him focus on what happened that day, and they could have an amiable conversation about the asshole that complained about him to the manager, or the family of four who short-changed him and slipped away without a trace, effortlessly quick for a pack that size. If he could only focus on the bright things ahead, instead of constantly regressing back to the life he left in the dust, things would be fine. He’d have moved on in a flash, no need to keep wallowing like this. Mac who? What sister? Everything would be plain sailing from here on out.

But Karen simply won’t let him. She teases out the threads of his old life like a cat playing with a ball of string, and then before Dennis knows it he’s tangled up in the same old arguments, except with no one to bat for the other side. Karen just listens in bafflement, occasionally asking stupid questions like, ‘but why did it have to be chickens and steaks, specifically?’ and generally failing to fill the gap she’d pointed out to him by raising the subject in the first place. All roads lead back to Philadelphia: after six months of this Dennis is at least willing to admit to that, even if it makes him curl his fingers into claws and knead the sofa cushions.

That doesn’t mean he’s any more eager to talk about it.

‘If you miss your old friends, your sister, what’s stopping you from picking up the phone yourself?’ she asks him this week in a quintessentially reasonable tone of voice, like she does almost every week, and Dennis laughs in her face, like he does almost every week. Somehow, this hasn’t yet deterred her from asking.

‘It’s not as simple as that,’ he argues. ‘And anyway, I don’t miss them. They’re just – in my head, is all.’

‘In your head?’ Karen prompts.

‘Yeah.’ He shrugs, staring past her and out the window. It’s boring as shit out there; the view is of a parking lot. A dozen lonely leaves blow across the tarmac. ‘You know, I spent like twenty years hanging out with them. I got used to them. Got used to just hanging out, wasting my life. Never reaching my full potential. If I went back to them, I’d be trashing all the progress I’ve made since I left.’

_What progress? The journey from the hotel bed to the door and back again?_ A snotty voice inside asks him. It sounds kind of like Dee.

‘No one mentioned going back to them,’ Karen points out with an almost imperceptible narrowing of the eyes. She always catches him when he makes slips like that, but she doesn’t always call him on it. In a way that makes Dennis even more wary, as if someday she’s going to pull out an entire stack of receipts demonstrating God knows what about his innermost psyche.

Not that she knows anything about his innermost psyche.

‘Do you feel as if your life has improved since you left them behind?’

‘Oh, for sure,’ Dennis says, breezing out a laugh. He clears his throat. ‘I’m not drinking as much, I’m spending time with my son.’

He trails off and Karen waits, embarrassingly, for more. That’s enough, isn’t it? That’s two whole things. Why does she always want more?

She smiles at him. It’s probably meant to be encouraging and supportive, and not make Dennis want to punch her in the face.

‘And that’s great progress,’ she tells him, and he senses the rebuttal coming before her lips have even formed it, ‘but I wonder if we could talk a little about how you feel in isolation from your friends. Sounds like it was a tight-knit group back there.’

‘That’s one word for it.’

‘What word would you use?’

‘Suffocating,’ he says contemplatively. He snorts. Like an over-stuffed comforter you couldn’t throw off. Like muscular arms wrapping around you, so tight you could hardly breathe. ‘Stifling. Toxic.’

‘Sounds unhealthy,’ Karen comments dryly. ‘That kind of atmosphere can force us to develop certain coping mechanisms, which can be challenging to leave behind when we finally move on.’

‘You’re saying ‘us’ a lot,’ Dennis points out, scowling. ‘I don’t remember you being there at the time.’

Karen just smiles at him again, implacable and irritating at ever. Dennis reverts to staring out the window. 

‘My point is that you find out who you are in a vacuum,’ Karen tells him, as if she hasn’t told him this a thousand times. Maybe she’s under the impression it’s one of those inspirational phrases people get on cushions and wall decals, instead of making Dennis want to throw himself into oncoming traffic. ‘Who do you think you are, Dennis?’

Dennis ate half a bag of stale Cheetos and a Life Saver for dinner last night because the thought of dragging himself out of his hotel bed for real food was making him want to throw up. The only thing stopping him from laughing in Karen’s face is the sensation that it would be almost impossible to stop once he started.

_Oh yeah,_ pipes up Dee’s smug voice again. _Soooo much progress_.

‘I’m just a classically good-looking, young father of a toddler who’s looking to get his life back on track,’ he tells Karen with a sharp smile, ignoring Dee’s sigh. There’s more to it than that – there’s more identifiers he could tack onto the end of the sentence, he knows it, he just can’t think of them right now. It’s too much pressure to put on a person anyway, asking them to define themselves in a single sentence. Who is he? Well, fuck you, lady. Who is anyone?

Karen continues to watch him implacably, content to wait him out. The silence stretches, air thin and crystalline with expectation.

A flickering light dances behind his eyes. He lands inside a memory like a pebble dropping into a well: Dee’s hand squeezing his when they were sinking, the bubbles rising from Charlie’s mouth when he gave up holding his breath. Mac nodding at him like everything was going to be alright, although Dennis knew that couldn’t possibly be true. Mac’s hand had been so firm, so steady. How could anyone be certain like that? How could anyone ever be that sure?

‘Dennis?’ Karen asks gently, and he drops abruptly back into his chair, blinking.

‘What kind of question is that, anyway?’ he gets out. ‘I’m who I’ve always been. I just need a little time to adjust, that’s all. Anyone would.’

‘It’s been nearly six months,’ Karen reminds him. ‘And you’re still working in a diner for minimum wage, still living in a hotel despite repeated offers from Mandy to help you find an apartment nearby. What’s stopping you?’

‘Did you _see_ some of the shitholes Mandy tried to get me to go and look at?’ Dennis asks her. Rhetorically, obviously. He’d never ask for Karen’s opinion on something as crucial as moving house. ‘That one last week only had one bathroom! I’m not going to subject myself to that.’

‘You told me your old apartment in Philadelphia only had one bathroom, and you were sharing that with another person,’ Karen says mildly. ‘How is this situation different?’

‘Well, that was Mac,’ he tries to explain. ‘He never really took up much time in there. He never even used much storage space, to be honest, aside from the mountain of hair gel, so it was kind of like having my own bathroom anyway. He didn’t even have a skincare routine, can you believe that? He’s just one of those guys who has great skin with even having to work at it, you know – didn’t even moisturise or anything. I explained the concept of anti-wrinkle cream to him a million times, and it always went right over his head. Lucky son of a bitch. Full head of hair at forty-one, too – really thick, not even going grey. I always told him it was a crime to slick it back every day but what can you do, huh?’

Karen watches him say this with a hint of weariness. She opens her mouth like she’s about to say something and closes it again. Then her expression resolves into something determined.

‘Dennis, usually I make a point not to raise issues like this before my client demonstrates their willingness to discuss the subject themselves, but I think, under the circumstances, that I might need to make an exception.’

Dennis raises an eyebrow at this, but Karen continues unperturbed.

‘Has it ever occurred to you that your relationship with Mac was characterised by a closeness not typically present between two male friends? That even your manipulative behaviour towards him indicates a level of co-dependency that falls outside the realm of simple friendship?’

‘No,’ Dennis answers immediately. There’s a sharp, fizzing sensation blooming outward from a central point in his chest, as if he’s just been skewered. Dee’s voice, distantly, laughing at him. ‘What do you even mean by that? That’s – that’s – there’s nothing wrong with two guys living together and sharing their workspace and, uh –’

‘Their lives?’ Karen suggests. Is her eye twitching a little? ‘Were you going to say ‘sharing their lives’?’

‘No,’ Dennis says, a shade too loudly. ‘Stop putting words in my mouth, Jesus Christ.’

He vaults abruptly out of his seat, striding over to the window before Karen can speak again. He stares blankly out at the parking lot, the humble skyline of Bismarck beyond it. He clears his throat, licks his lips to try and chase away the numbness.

‘I mean, sure, fine,’ he starts slowly. If he focuses, he can watch his own lips move in the reflection on the window pane. ‘If you’re going to put a gun to my head about it, I guess I can admit it was obvious that Mac had a little crush on me, okay? And maybe once or twice I might have taken advantage of that to achieve my own ends, but I never made him do anything he wouldn’t have agreed to on his own, and nothing was ever going to come of it, and anyway now that he’s out of the closet I’m sure he –’ something sticks in his throat here but he swallows and forces past it, shaking his head with a frown – ‘I’m sure he’s having a whale of a time. I’m sure he’s hitting the clubs like a nuclear bomb, how about that?’

He’s man enough to admit that last part comes out a little bitterly, his lip curling like a wisp of smoke in his reflection, but that’s only because he’s jealous of all the action Mac’s probably getting now, not because it’s Mac himself. What Dennis wouldn’t give to be out there with him, discovering sex all over again. He’s probably slamming ass all up and down town. Probably doesn’t even have time to miss Dennis, he’s so busy getting laid. Probably forgotten all about him. Fuck.

‘Like a nuclear bomb,’ Karen repeats faintly. She sighs and shifts on her chair, turning around to look at him. ‘I’m sure I’ll regret asking this, but why might that be?’

‘Well, he’s a good-looking guy, if you can get past the tattoos and the obsession with hair gel,’ Dennis reminds her. He’d shown her a picture of the gang in their first session but none of the visuals seem to have stuck, and he keeps having to remind her what they all look like. ‘I mean, the guy works out, Karen. It’s a different kind of appeal to my own delicate, toned good looks, obviously, but it’s not without its charms.’ He pauses. ‘And looks aside, he’s actually really attentive to people’s emotional needs, you know? Which is surprising considering the racism and misogyny and everything. You’d expect a guy that jammed up his own ass to be completely oblivious, but there you go.’

He gives a short laugh which Karen doesn’t respond to. She just waits, implacable and silent until Dennis coughs just to break the silence.

‘Okay,’ she says after a minute, drawing the word out as if she’s really having to think about it. ‘But just to clarify, this crush of Mac’s – it was all one-sided, is that what you’re telling me?’

‘Of course.’ Dennis turns away from the window and stares at her, giving an unsteady, incredulous laugh. ‘You don’t think that I – that _I_ – God, no. No. That’s ridiculous. It was one-sided and everyone knew that. Everyone could see that Mac was in love with me and I just saw him as a friend, and that was the end of it. It was sad, to tell you the truth. A little pathetic.’

He catches his breath, smoothing an out-of-place curl behind his ear. His hand is shaking, which is ridiculous because he actually ate an entire ham salad sandwich for lunch today. Karen always picks up on the shakes and gives him shit for it, so he wanted to head that off at the pass. He leans against the cold window pane, sitting down on the sill and wrapping his hand tight around it to stop himself moving. Kinda feels like that sandwich is about to come right back up. Wouldn’t that just serve Karen right?

_Pathetic,_ Dee repeats, sounding kind of thoughtful. _Who exactly are we talking about, here?_

‘In love with you?’ Karen repeats, eyebrow arched. ‘That’s quite the step up from just having a crush.’

‘Well,’ Dennis starts, drawing out the word like a piece of toffee. ‘It’s just a figure of speech. I don’t know if he – because. I mean. Obviously I never asked.’

‘Obviously,’ Karen repeats. She’s watching him with the same armour-piercing intensity that drew out the details about Mrs Klinsky, whether Dennis wanted to give them or not. It’s so much harder when she just sits there and says nothing, lets Dennis spill himself into the silence. It’s so much harder to keep everything in.

‘It’s a moot point now, anyway, whatever he felt,’ Dennis says. His voice is dull. ‘Because it’s over and I’m not going back.’

‘Right,’ Karen says meditatively. When he glares at her, she refuses to capitulate, just gives him a tired smile as she glances at the clock on the wall. ‘Well, that about concludes our session today, Dennis. Same time next week?’

\---

There must be something in the water because Mandy watches him closely the next day when he’s over for dinner, although he pays extra attention to Brian Junior, determinedly steering various planes and trains and automobiles through the air and across the table to make him giggle and forget he doesn’t like eating his greens. Dennis didn’t like them either. What kid with sense ever does?

Mandy catches his arm when he’s getting ready to leave, Brian tucked up for the night.

‘Wait,’ she says, smiling at him, looking a little anxious. ‘Stay for a drink?’

He looks down at her hand on his wrist, blankly processing the invitation and wondering why panicky adrenaline is flooding him at the implication behind it, his stomach squirming with dread. He should want it, right? If Mandy wants it too. Then everything would be perfect, they’d be a happy couple just like Brian Junior deserves, and everything would fit just right. He’s probably just out of practice, that’s all. He just needs to get back into the swing of it.

He’s taking a deep breath, steeling himself when Mandy pulls her hand back like she’s been burned.

‘Not like that,’ she says, fast. She rolls her eyes, obviously trying to turn it into a joke. ‘I think we both know that wouldn’t go well.’

Dennis laughs, scratching the back of his neck.

_What does she mean by_ that _, exactly?_ Dee wonders out loud, finger to her chin. _Ohhhh, unless she means –_

‘Right,’ he says, frowning. ‘Yeah.’

‘I just meant, you should hang out for a while,’ Mandy says, smiling sweetly. ‘Have a cup of coffee with me?’

There’s a _Lethal Weapon_ marathon on TV tonight, Dennis reminds himself, and then immediately resolves to go out and find himself a goddamn hobby at the soonest possible opportunity.

 ‘Well, sure,’ he smiles back weakly, setting down his coat.

‘Tell me about your day,’ Mandy suggests when they’re situated back on the couch with cups of coffee. 

Dennis ponders it, leaning his head back against the back of the sofa.

‘How much detail are we talking here?’ he asks the ceiling. ‘You want to hear about the customers I threw out of the diner for dealing, or no?’

Her slightly startled laugh tells him no, and he hides a wince. He keeps misjudging it with her, lapsing back into his learned patterns of offensive humour. Not exactly family-friendly. He keeps forgetting he doesn’t need to resort to that anymore, he can rise above it now. It’s not like anyone around him even gets it, anyway.

‘What’s your routine?’ Mandy suggests. ‘I really don’t know much about how your days play out, beyond visiting with Brian Junior and having dinner with us every now and then.’

‘My routine,’ Dennis repeats, his voice sounding dull. He clears his throat and tries to inject a little energy into it. ‘Okay, so I get up around six thirty. I check my phone, you know, have a cup of coffee. Take a shower. I get to work around seven thirty where something’s probably already going wrong if it’s a day ending in Y. I take my break eleven thirty to twelve. I get off at two, pick Brian Junior up, as you know.’

He tips her a nod and she smiles, although there’s concern in her eyes. What does the woman want? For Dennis to wax rhapsodic about the sheer joy of rolling over in the morning to find his phone empty of messages yet again? For him to relate the truly horrifying number of Netflix hours he’s racked up since he got here, seeing as no one ever takes their break with him at lunch and he’s alone in the evenings?

He fights down the stab of irritation with a quick, deep inhale.

‘I, um. Sometimes I shower again when I get back to the hotel,’ he continues lamely, then winces again. She didn’t ask for an update on his hygiene regimen. ‘And that’s kind of it, I guess. I watch TV. I go to bed.’

‘What about therapy?’ Mandy reminds him, and he shoots her a sarcastic finger gun.

‘How could I forget therapy? Wednesdays at five o’clock,’ he says sourly. Mandy grins at him, refusing to be cowed.

‘What about going out?’ she asks expectantly, grinning at him. ‘I bet you’ve made the rounds a couple of times, huh? Met some cool people?’

‘Actually, I, uh.’ He looks down at his hands. ‘I haven’t been out so much since I uh, y’know –’ he gestures at the coffee and wonders why it’s so difficult to just say ‘stopped trying to drink myself to death.’

‘Oh, of course,’ Mandy says, turning a delightful shade of pink. ‘God, I’m so stupid, sorry, I didn’t think, I –’

‘It’s fine,’ Dennis shrugs, rolling his eyes. ‘You don’t need to walk on eggshells around me.’

‘Right,’ Mandy nods, looking away from him quickly. ‘Well, then that works out perfectly! I was just thinking about how I have a free space at this little get-together I’m throwing next week, and with you wanting to meet new people and all –’

‘That’s not what I said,’ Dennis interrupts, but Mandy rolls right over him.

‘It’d be a great opportunity for you to socialise!’ she beams at him. ‘Meet some of my friends, people who’ve known Brian Junior since day one, huh? What’d you say?’

There aren’t many things Dennis can say in the face of a proposition like that, no matter how much he’d like to.

‘Okay, sure,’ he says with a slightly fixed smile that turns into something more genuine when Mandy continues to beam. It’s only one night, he tells himself as she shows him to the door and he strolls out to his rental car. How bad can it possibly be?

\---

He’s rethinking that particular hypothetical when he finds himself standing on Mandy’s doorstep the next week on the night of the party, holding a bottle of wine and contemplating just relocating to the bushes and chugging the whole damn thing instead of ringing the doorbell.

Sadly, Mandy throws open the door before he can follow through on the impulse. She’s wearing a summer dress in a floral pattern and Dennis immediately starts re-evaluating his shirt and slacks combo – the tie’s too much, he should have realised it wouldn’t be that kind of dinner – but she interrupts his thought process.

‘Dennis, you made it!’ she exclaims, as happy as if she hadn’t seen him for a year and he’s not over here every damn week because they’re the only people in town he knows. ‘You look great, come in!’

‘Thanks, I brought –’

‘Wine,’ she notices, taking the bottle and making an admiring noise over it as she takes him by the hand, pulling him through to the kitchen.

‘It’s Sauvignon Blanc,’ he says loudly. ‘I wasn’t sure what we’d – oh. Hi.’

Mandy turns around to beam at him as she drags him into the kitchen and lets go of his hand, presenting him with a flourish to the only other occupant: a wiry guy in his early forties, wearing glasses and an argyle sweater vest that immediately makes something in Dennis’s stomach unclench. At least he isn’t the only person who misjudged the dress code.

‘This is Dennis, Brian Junior’s father,’ Mandy says, her voice gone girlish and sweet in her excitement. Dennis smiles as pleasantly as he can manage and tries to look like a decent father. ‘Dennis, this is my friend Brandon. He works in publishing and has two boys of his own.’

She claps her hands, grinning at them both. Dennis smiles a little bemusedly, flicking a glance at Brandon: he shakes his head with a wry grin. No help there.

Mandy clears her throat gently.

‘Brandon is recently divorced, isn’t that right?’

Dennis quirks an eyebrow at the bizarre, unnecessary level of detail, but Mandy just blinks at him innocently. He turns to Brandon with a smile.

‘Well, that’s – I’m sorry to hear that, man, but it’s good to meet you. How’d you –’

_Then_ the penny drops. Dee’s sarcastic clapping echoes through Dennis’s skull.

Dennis snaps over to Mandy, who’s wearing an expression like butter wouldn’t melt. Recently divorced, huh?

Jesus Christ. Who knew eyes that wide could hold such evil?

Mandy isn’t introducing him to her friends. Mandy is _setting him up._

‘I’ll leave you boys to it,’ she says in what she clearly imagines is a generous tone of voice, trying to slip past Dennis back into the dining room, where Dennis now registers the welcome sound of other human beings conversing: human beings who will presumably not attempt to throw Dennis at the nearest eligible bachelor the moment he demonstrates one iota of emotional vulnerability.

He snags Mandy by the arm.

‘Not so fast,’ he says in a low voice, then turns a bright smile on Brandon, who looks a little dazed. Poor guy. Probably can’t keep up. Christ, that argyle really is abhorrent, and it isn’t hiding anything to brag about either. Was Mandy operating under the erroneous assumption that what’s inside is more important than what’s on the outside? Guy looks like he could barely lift a napkin. ‘We’ll just be a moment.’

‘Dennis, sweetie, you’re hurting me,’ Mandy’s voice trills as he leads her back through the hall.

‘Shit, really?’ Dennis mutters, rolling his eyes and pushing her out the front door.

‘We’re going to do this in front of a house full of guests, really?’ she asks him, whirling around with her hands on her hips. She’s using her no-nonsense-from-you-Brian-Junior voice but Dennis is much, much too angry for it to work.

‘ _Outside_ a house full of guests,’ he snaps. ‘What the hell is this, Mandy? You’re setting me up with a guy? I’m not gay! Or didn’t you get the memo when I _impregnated you?_ ’

‘There is such a thing as bisexuality, Dennis,’ Mandy tells him frostily, as if he’s never been on the internet before. ‘And besides, what about Mac?’

‘What about Mac?’ Dennis groans, throwing his hands up and restraining the urge to just shout it to the heavens. Maybe he should hire a skywriter, rent a billboard. Statistically, at some point someone has to believe him when he tells them there’s nothing between him and Mac. It’s just the law of numbers. Right?

‘Um, he was your partner?’ Mandy glares. ‘In case you’d forgotten? He was willing to raise a child with you, Dennis –’

‘That was all fake, between me and Mac,’ he hisses. ‘I’ve told you that before! And if that wasn’t enough, I thought I made it clear when I _moved across the country_ to get away from him!’

‘Oh, was that why?’ Mandy asks, a hint of frost entering her voice. She cocks her hip. ‘And here I thought you moved to be a father to your son, Dennis.’

Dennis sighs, running a hand through his hair. 

‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ he says begrudgingly. ‘Of course it was for him. Escaping Mac was just a fringe benefit.’

‘Uh huh,’ Mandy murmurs, looking completely unconvinced. Dennis scowls. It’s not his job to convince anyone that Mac really is as annoying in real life as Dennis makes him sound. All Mandy ever says in response to his rants on the subject is ‘wow, he really committed to the whole fake relationship thing, huh? How long did it take for him to fix up your apartment again?’ and ‘I don’t know, Dennis, still sounds like he’d make a pretty good dad.’

‘The last time he tried to parent a child, he covered it in shoe polish,’ Dennis had told her through gritted teeth, which only made her laugh, and Dennis had thrown his hands up in despair.

‘The point remains that while it was _super_ nice of you to think of me,’ he says now, watching Mandy’s lips thin with irritation, ‘I have no interest in dating this guy. Or banging him. Or ever seeing him again, come to think of it.’

‘Who said anything about dating him?’ Mandy asks. She steps forward, voice and eyes imploring now: a deadly combination. ‘You haven’t even had a conversation with the man yet, Dennis!’

‘Mandy,’ he says warningly. She holds up her hands, sighing with mock capitulation.

‘Hand to God, Dennis, it’s not a date, it’s not a set-up, it’s just a group of friends having dinner together. That’s all. No pressure.’

Dennis looks at her from under unconvinced eyelashes.

‘No pressure,’ he repeats noncommittally.

‘None at all,’ she says in a soothing voice. She pauses, hint of a smirk on her lips. ‘And if afterwards the two of you decided you wanted to get to know each other a little better, then of course that would be fine too.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Dennis says loudly, burying his face in his hands. ‘I have no interest in getting to know the guy better! I mean for God’s sake, Mandy, it’s obvious the guy wouldn’t know an amphibious exploring vehicle from a hole in the ground! I expected you to have better taste than that.’

‘An amphibious exploring vehicle?’ Mandy repeats, momentarily diverted.

‘And actually,’ Dennis continues, unperturbed, ‘that goes for any guy you’re thinking about setting me up with. You hear me? I don’t care how recently divorced they are, I’m not interested. Because I’m _not gay_.’

Mandy sighs again and shoots him a disappointed look.

‘You said that already,’ she tells him as she opens the door back into the party, the laughter and music streaming out like a flood of colour into the suddenly tense silence, ‘and it wasn’t convincing the first time either.’

\---

It’s not that the rest of the dinner party goes badly, per se. It’s just that Dennis isn’t really there for most of it.

Oh, sure, he’s sat in his chair and making sounds with his mouth and eating a bite here and there, but he’s not in the room, not really. His hands reach for his wine glass independently of his desires; he eats five forkfuls of peas in a row before he remembers muzzily that he hates them, right? Is that him? He thinks it’s him. Even Dee’s gone quiet, so he can’t ask her for help.

Maybe it’s him. Probably. He’s pretty sure.

Brandon asks a couple of questions at first but they float in through Dennis’s ear and get tangled up somewhere in the haze. Dennis can’t make his mouth move to ask Brandon to repeat himself and anyway, the mechanism that allows him to care has been disengaged. He’s asleep behind the wheel, his consciousness drifting away from his body on a balloon string.

Later he finds himself outside on the back porch, a lit cigarette in his hand, mouthful of smoke he has to cough through as he shudders back into his body. What time is it? Is the party over? The sky is dark and clear and no voices drift out through the crack in the door. Must just be him and Mandy, and Brian asleep upstairs. Jesus Christ, he fucked this up. Couldn’t even get through one dinner party with nice, normal people. Give him one job to do, one simple task, and he can’t even get through it without straight up dissociating. 

‘Dennis?’

He rubs his eyes and sighs before he turns around to face the music. Only to find Mandy holding a cup of something steaming and looking at him with soft eyes.

‘Come inside,’ she tells him, giving a begrudging smile. He hesitates, and she rolls her eyes. ‘C’mon, it’s safe now, everyone left. And in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not dressed for the weather.’

They sit down on the couch with cups of hot chocolate. She put marshmallows in his, as if he’s Brian Junior and he just scraped his knee.

In hindsight, Dennis really should have seen it coming, but then, it’s been a long night, defending his non-existent virtue and everything.

He looks up when Mandy puts a hand on his knee.

‘Dennis,’ she starts, her voice almost woundingly gentle. Dennis rears away from her on the couch.

‘No, no, no,’ he says, eyeing her sympathetic expression with panic, ‘not you too, not tonight, Mandy –’

‘Dennis, we have to talk about this,’ she says in a tone with a hint of pleading. ‘It’s not working, Dennis, come on –’

‘It _is_ working,’ he says loudly over her. ‘It’s working if I say it’s working, Mandy, and I say it _is_ –’

‘It’s not,’ she cuts across him sharply, and it startles him into silence. She sighs. ‘Look, I didn’t want to have to do this, but – Dennis, I was watching you tonight. I’m sure you’re good at telling yourself this isn’t what you’re feeling, but I can see how unhappy you are. A room full of nice people, good people – all laughing, talking, having fun, and you couldn’t get away fast enough. You hated it, Dennis.’

‘Because you set me up with a dude!’ Dennis exclaims. ‘And because your friends are boring as shit, Mandy, I’m sorry to have to tell you –’

‘It’s not about that, I know it isn’t, and I know _you_ know,’ she says fiercely. ‘I’m not saying this to hurt you, but someone has to. I thought – I thought all you needed was a little time to adjust, that’s all. But it’s been six months now, and it’s clear that you still hate every waking minute. You’re drowning out here, Dennis, and I can’t watch it happen anymore.’

They sit in stunned, empty silence: the vacuum after an explosion.

‘So what,’ Dennis spits, his heart beating a million times a minute. This isn’t how he pictured this happening. He pictured – something bigger. A dramatic scene, Mandy withholding a crying Brian Junior while Dennis sunk to his knees and gave a noble speech about fatherhood and responsibility, and how sometimes you have to nearly lose something to realise how much you need it. And instead there’s this: his hands wrapped, burning, around his mug, marshmallow scum coating his teeth while Mandy watches him with a horrifying, naked sympathy. Couldn’t get away fast enough? She’s lucky they’re having this conversation without her having to nail him to the couch. ‘You’re kicking me out, is that it? You’re sending me away from Brian Junior?’

‘I would never send you away, and I would never stop you seeing him if you wanted to,’ Mandy says calmly. Dennis would dearly love to interrupt here with a laundry list of all the things he’s done in the past that would make her take that back, that make him unfit to be a father, but she’s fixing him with such a look that he can’t get the words out. ‘But we managed before you moved here, and we’ll manage again after you go.’

‘Who said I’m going anywhere?’ Dennis protests. ‘Look, this isn’t fair, I made a commitment, I – I moved across the country for the two of you, and –’

‘And we never asked you to do that, Dennis,’ Mandy points out, her voice edging into shrill. For the first time he notices the tears standing out in her eyes and it shuts him up with a snap like a metal cage slamming shut. ‘I never meant for you to move all the way out here, away from your friends, away from the man you –’

‘ _Don’t,_ ’ Dennis says, voice so low it sounds more like a growl. He takes in her shocked expression and looks away, clearing his throat. ‘Sorry. I just – not again, alright? Not now.’

‘Okay,’ she says slowly. ‘That’s fair. But that’s – that’s kind of what I’m talking about, Dennis. Don’t you see? It’s obvious that you have unfinished business back in Philly and it’s making you miserable.’

She pauses but Dennis remains furiously, mulishly silent. She sighs.

‘I’m not saying you’d never see Brian. I did think about it, you know. I’d bring him over on holidays, and you could come visit for however long you wanted. It’s not about taking him away from you, it’s about not making him feel like he’s second best, can’t you see that? I know you want to be a good father, Dennis, but there’s ways for you to do that without sacrificing everything else that makes you happy.’

‘You have no idea what makes me happy,’ he tells her bitterly.

She throws up her hands in exasperation.

‘Fine! Maybe I don’t! Maybe I don’t know you at all. But I’ll tell you what I think, Dennis,’ she says, leaning in, her voice clear as crystal. ‘I think you know exactly what would make you happy, and I think knowing it scared you all the way out here, and I think now it’s time to nut the hell up and face it, and stop using your only son as an excuse not to go after what you want.’

She sits back and folds her arms across her chest, watching her words sink into Dennis like meat hooks.

‘Jesus Christ, Mandy,’ he says after a minute, and that’s a close thing. They’re the only words that come to mind, but they don’t feel like enough. He tries again. ‘Where do you get off saying –’

She shoots him a look, and he stops. Goddamn, this town is determined to strip the nobility from him. Just once, he’d like it if he could get off the kind of rant he used to dish out six times a week back home without someone tossing him a glare that could strip paint. They must make the women different out here.

He sighs heavily, leaning back against the couch and staring up at the ceiling. The mug is finally cooling in his hands. He’d thought all along it was for Brian Junior that he was doing this, but maybe he’d been lying about that too. Well, why couldn’t it be just because he wanted to try it, too? Couldn’t it be a beautiful thing in and of itself, a beautiful and powerful thing, for him to cut himself away from everything he knew like that? To make himself anew? To shave away the parts of himself that didn’t fit here – carve himself into something smaller, smoother, easier to handle? He’d always wanted to know if it was possible, after all; it’s easier to love something when all the sharp edges have been rounded off. He just didn’t realise he’d been doing such a terrible job.

‘If you’re looking for an easy answer, I don’t think you’re going to find it up there,’ Mandy says wryly.

Against his own wishes Dennis laughs, and it releases something that was caught; an almost sob comes tumbling out. He puts a hand to his face, and Mandy squeezes his knee.

‘What if it doesn’t work?’ he asks her, his voice wavering. ‘What if he doesn’t –’

He can’t get the rest of the words out, can’t even look her in the eye. But God bless her, Mandy doesn’t ask.

‘Then it doesn’t work,’ she shrugs. She props her head up on the back of the couch and looks at him. She’s taken hold of his hand and she squeezes it, giving him a tired smile. ‘At least you’ll have tried, Dennis. Don’t you have to try?’

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for the comments so far!!

Thirty-six hours later, Dennis is stood outside Paddy’s, staring up at the sign and ruminating on the meaning of the term ‘existential crisis’.

He knows he needs to go inside eventually. He knows. He’s just working up to it, that’s all. He’d like to see the rest of the gang doing any better than he is right now. After all, none of _them_ know what it really means to abandon your entire life on the spur of the moment only to return six months down the line. Well, maybe Frank, but when it comes to weird life decisions he’s an outlier even in their group, so really he shouldn’t be counted at all.

There’s no doubt they’re going to give him shit about it, but one thing is clear to Dennis: he’s _not_ returning with his tail between his legs. He’s not a failure. He’s _not._ He just tried something different, and it didn’t work. That doesn’t mean he failed. So maybe he didn’t do as well away from Philadelphia as he thought he would. At least he’s man enough to admit that! And he still gets to see Brian Junior during holidays, so. Sure, it had been so scarily easy to wrap up his affairs in Bismarck that it really brought home how little effort he’d been putting in, but the main thing to remember is that he did _not_ crash and burn out there. He didn’t. That’s not what this is.

He puffs out a long breath, hand clenching around the handle of his suitcase. Sign looks the same. Outside of the bar looks exactly the goddamn same, just as scummy as always, like it’d kill them to ever make any positive changes around here. Maybe he should’ve gone back to the apartment first, dumped his stuff, turned up all refreshed to dazzle them, but honestly it hadn’t even occurred to him. His jetlagged body’s been dragging him in the direction of home ever since he got off the plane, and it turns out home is the bar.

He stares at the door for so long it starts to warp in front of his eyes, blur with something like heat haze. His heart is beating unusually hard. It’s just a fucking door, what’s the problem? It’ll swing open as easily for him as it does for anyone else. All he has to do is take that first step.

Except – what if they’ve moved? What if, against all fucking odds, the whole gang have just upped sticks and moved away without telling him? The last time he spoke to any of them was months ago, and every single one of them defriended him on Facebook the moment he left – petty bitches – so it’s not like he’d know. What have they even been doing while he was away? What had them so occupied they couldn’t even manage a fucking phone call? Part of him wants to believe they just missed him so much they couldn’t stand to even hear his voice, but there are limits to how much even Dennis can lie to himself.

It’s way more likely that they tried to fill the gap by bringing in a new member, someone inevitably inferior – not as good-looking, not as eloquent or graceful or suave. Maybe, he thinks with a pang, Mac tried to contract a new roommate, like Dennis did that time Mac and Charlie faked their deaths. Someone who actually rewarded his attention, who wouldn’t push him away when he held on too tight.

But Dennis knows better than anyone that replacements never last. He put down twenty-six years as Mac’s roommate; twenty-six years’ investment that he’s coming to cash in on. No one else would ever be able to compete with that. There isn’t even a chance.

So why is it so hard to walk through those doors and do it?

‘Dennis?’

He whirls around to find Charlie squinting at him, _Charlie_ – all dirtied up, carrying a shovel in one hand and a sack of something in the other. Staring at Dennis like he’s a fucking ghost, before a huge grin starts to dawn on his face.

‘Holy shit, dude, are you back? You’re back! Did we know you were coming back?’

‘No,’ Dennis hears himself say. He swallows around the sudden lump in his throat, trying to breathe. He hadn’t thought this would be – it’s just _Charlie,_ not even the one Dennis was worried about – but then Dennis hasn’t seen him for half a year, and Charlie looks happy to see him, and it hurts in this really pure, sweet way, the sight of his friendly face.

‘No,’ he makes himself say again. ‘No, you didn’t know.’

‘Well, did you tell Dee? She never said anything –’

‘No, I didn’t, I just – look, can we go inside?’ Dennis clasps the back of his own neck, nodding down at his suitcase nonsensically. ‘I feel kind of exposed out here.’

‘Sure, dude,’ Charlie nods, looking down at the suitcase and frowning as if there might be an unexploded bomb in there. He looks up and winks at Dennis. ‘I mean, you know where the door is, right?’

Charlie’s still smiling at him as he opens the door, saying some words Dennis isn’t listening to as he follows, yanking his suitcase awkwardly over the threshold, wincing at the scrape of the wheels on the floor of the bar. He doesn’t look up, can’t look up, until he’s inside, until he’s already there and he can’t run away from whoever’s about to greet him.

Dee’s stood behind the bar, mid-conversation with Frank. A few scattered regulars tucked into booths don’t even look up at the sound of the opening door. He spots Dotty hanging over by the jukebox and he can’t even smile, can’t even do anything but give a weak nod when her face lights up.

No Mac.

His absence echoes through Dennis for a moment before Dee’s strangled shout hits him, shrill and shocked and so fucking _missed_ that he’s blinking back tears as she barrels towards him, her eyes huge and outraged. She stumbles over a barstool on the way and kicks herself loose, and Dennis is laughing helplessly before her arms are crushing around him, the lump in his throat turning into a fucking boulder.

‘Holy fucking shit, you goddamn _asshole,_ ’ she breathes, right next to his ear. He closes his eyes and buries his face in her neck just for a second, just long enough to take in that she smells the same, same stupid fucking deodorant since she was fourteen. God. Stupid goddamn beloved bitch. ‘You fucking _asshole,_ Dennis.’

‘Yeah,’ he says shakily, squeezing her harder. ‘Yeah, I know, sis.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Frank says from somewhere over Dee’s shoulder. ‘Dragging your sorry ass back here after all, huh? When did you get back?’

‘Uh, like, now,’ Dennis mumbles as Dee starts to pull away. They swipe their hands quickly over their cheeks in unison and catch each other’s eye, and something in Dennis’s face makes Dee put a hesitant hand back on his shoulder. He grabs it, hand circling around her wrist, before she can take it back. Her eyes get big and glassy again but she just nods at him, swallowing hard.

_Okay,_ he tells himself, giving her a shaky smile. _Okay, time to breathe now. You can do that_.

Dee clears her throat, pulling her hand back.

‘What the _fuck,_ Dennis? _’_ she asks with enviable control over her voice, and Dennis lets out a hoarse laugh.

‘I know, right,’ he grins, and then Charlie’s crowding in too, clapping him on the back. Even Frank looks kind of happy to see him, and he has to swallow hard a couple of times just so he can speak again.

‘Did you miss me?’ he asks.

Frank and Charlie scoff.

‘Did we shit,’ Dee says, shoving him a little too hard. She bumps Charlie’s shoulder, her smile softening minutely. ‘We’ve been thriving without you. Right, Charlie?’

Charlie rolls his eyes and bumps her back as they all trail over to the bar and sit. Is that a hint of a blush? Dennis is jetlagged as hell and stressed the entire fuck out, but he’s not blind. He knows that look, and he isn’t used to seeing it directed at someone who isn’t the waitress. Now that Charlie’s sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, Dennis notices a large, off-centre tattoo of what looks like a badly drawn bee on his left wrist. It jogs something in the back of Dennis’s mind, but he can’t quite figure out what.

‘What are you doing back, anyway?’ Dee redirects his attention, eyebrows raised. ‘Mandy throw you out?’

‘No, I just,’ he starts, and then isn’t sure how to finish. The stupid butterflies in his stomach that caught a free ride from North Dakota are starting up again. He snaps on a bright smile. ‘Just thought I’d swing by, see how you guys are doing. Six months without me, you know. Thought I’d better check for suicide notes.’

‘So you’re not sticking around?’ Dee asks, eyes narrowing. ‘This is just a visit?’

‘No. I don’t know. Uh.’ Dennis looks down at his hands for a minute, the combined weight of their suspicious gazes forcing his neck down. ‘There’s actually something I need to – um, do you guys know where –’

‘What about Brian Junior?’ Dee cuts across him curiously, with blatant disregard for his blood pressure. He feels a familiar sudden spike of irritation and savours the metallic fizz of it, spreading like popping candy through the back of his throat. ‘You just gonna abandon him now? You went all the way out there and you can’t even stick it out?’

‘That’s not exactly what happened,’ Dennis frowns. ‘I tried, I really did, I just –’

‘I knew you’d come crawling back eventually,’ Frank says, thick satisfaction in his voice. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Charlie says, rolling his eyes. ‘You won the pool, we know, Frank.’

‘Wait, wait,’ Dennis says, holding his hands up. They watch him, clearly unimpressed. ‘You guys ran a pool on when I’d come back?’

‘Of course we did,’ Dee snorts. ‘Have you met us?’

Dennis opens his mouth to protest but has to concede that one.

‘What’d you bet?’ he frowns at her, folding his arms across his chest.

‘A week,’ she says, with entirely unearned smugness considering she was wrong.

Dennis makes a prissy insulted noise.

‘A week _?_ You didn’t think I’d last a _week –_ ’

‘Hey, at least I gave you a month,’ Charlie interjects.

‘That’s not much better, bro,’ Dennis protests.

Frank snorts.

‘Who cares?’ he asks. ‘I got between six months and a year, so I win. Pay up, assholes.’

Dee and Charlie start rummaging around in their wallets, keeping up a steady stream of curses and suggestions as to where Frank can stick his winnings.

‘What did, uh. What did Mac bet?’ Dennis asks, trying to keep his voice casual.

Charlie exchanges a fleeting glance with Dee.

‘I don’t think he bet, right, Frank?’ Charlie says, nudging Frank in the side with his elbow.

Frank frowns.

‘Nah, he bowed outta that one,’ he says after a moment. Dennis looks away, trying to untangle the knot of weird feelings in his chest. It’s not like that means anything. _Not_ betting on Dennis’s return is way more respectful than betting on it. It doesn’t mean Mac didn’t care, obviously. Mac cares more than anyone, he always has.

‘Well, whatever,’ he says after a second. The crazed cartoon-like timer in the back of his head waiting for Mac to appear is setting his teeth on edge, but he can ignore it so long as someone else is talking. ‘What’s been going on here anyway? I want to know everything. Charlie, I notice you carrying an alarmingly large sack of something just there. What the hell is that about?’

‘Oh! We started up an allotment, dude,’ Charlie tells him, beaming. ‘Yeah, it’s super cool, we’re growing like cabbages and tomatoes and celery and –’

‘We’re not growing like, half that stuff, Charlie,’ Dee interjects, her mouth twitching. ‘You know it’s not the right season for –’

‘Well, we’re _going_ to,’ Charlie tells her, in the tones of someone who’s had this exact conversation so many times they’ve got the rhythm down pat. That flash of something knowing and affectionate passes between them again, so fast Dennis almost misses it. He watches the two of them smiling at each other for a second, trying to fit it to the shape of what he already knows. It’s not that it’s surprising, it’s just kind of weird – Dee doesn’t _do_ affectionate. Or she didn’t used to.  

‘It’s not even really an allotment,’ Dee pipes up, as if the thought just occurred to her. ‘It’s like –’

‘Just because it’s someone’s abandoned yard, Dee, doesn’t mean we can’t make it _ours_ ,’ Charlie says, in a low, fond tone Dennis can’t remember hearing from him before. Then he stiffens slightly, his eyes flickering to Dennis’s face and away as if he’s only just remembered Dennis is there. Dee catches it and the smile drops right off her face. The silence hangs there for a second, awkward as hell. There’s an oddly expectant air to the way they’re studiously _not_ looking at him that makes Dennis frown.

‘What?’ he asks, mystified. ‘What happened? Do I have something on my face?’

‘No,’ Dee says, her voice taut and impatient. A muscle in her jaw jumps. ‘Just. Aren’t you going to –’

She gestures between herself and Charlie and then back to Dennis, who just blinks at her.

‘Give us shit about this?’ Charlie finishes bluntly.

‘No?’ Dennis asks more than says, dragging out the syllable until Charlie’s mouth quirks reluctantly in a grin. ‘Should I? I mean, I can if you want, but if you want to waste your time digging around in the dirt and growing stupid vegetables then what do I care, right?’

‘Right,’ Charlie says, looking at Dee – they raise their eyebrows at each other and turn to Dennis with similar perplexedly pleased expressions, which is so uncanny that Dennis might have to rethink his whole position on this development.

‘Six months,’ Frank says disgustedly. ‘Six goddamn months I been dealing with this shit. And now you’re back, and I swear to God if that other pile of crap starts up again, I’m gonna commit myself. I’m out, it’s done. You won’t even have to make me go. They got good meds there, better’n this shithole.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Dennis asks, then turns to Dee and Charlie. ‘What is he talking about?’

Before they can answer, Dennis hears the doors open behind him, and a familiar tread on the floor. His throat tightens.

‘What’s up, bitches?’ comes a cocky voice, one Dennis’s entire body recognises. Every thought about how cool he wanted to act flies straight out of his head, every other impulse lost, and he’s turning toward Mac before he can even begin to process it, his heart thudding painfully hard in his chest.

And then there he is, less than ten feet away after six fucking months in the dark without him, and he looks so good Dennis could cry. He looks _more,_ bigger and harder and stronger and maybe even a little older but oh, God, he’s looking at Dennis just the same, just the same as he always did.

‘Dennis,’ Mac gets out, sounding like he’s been punched in the throat. His eyes are so big, so soft and stunned and beautiful, the sun warmth of his gaze spreading over every inch of Dennis. As if Dennis is the miracle here. ‘Dennis, you, you’re –’

‘I’m here,’ Dennis blurts out, and somehow the way Mac is looking at him changes and melts, gets even softer at the sound of his voice. ‘I’m here, Mac, I –’

He catches it the second before his voice starts to break, his eyes widening as he swallows. He wrenches his gaze away from Mac. Fuck, Dee and Charlie and Frank are all still here, there are _customers_ still here, for God’s sake, here to see Dennis spilling his guts at Mac’s feet. This isn’t how things were supposed to go, he wasn’t supposed to lose it like this, he can’t –

‘Dennis, hey,’ Mac’s voice says. ‘You okay, man?’

He’s – closer, he got closer somehow, without Dennis noticing. Maybe a foot away, leaning on the bar next to him, palms spread wide on the wood. He’s watching Dennis carefully, his voice low and steady, soothing the snarl in Dennis’s stomach. There’s grey in his beard now, his jawline a little more sharply defined, and his hair is loose rather than slicked back. Dennis’s fingertips sting with the urge to run through it, see the way Mac’s eyelids might flutter if he tugged a little, pulled his head back. He’s got such a beautiful throat, skin so soft and tan and smooth where it meets his shoulders. Something in Dennis had always yearned towards it, mystified by how Mac could possibly be so strong and so delicate at the same time. It hurt to yearn. It hurt not to know.

‘You’re okay, Den,’ Mac tells him, smiling at him a little tentatively. He puts a hand on Dennis’s arm like he thinks he’s going to be shrugged off, thumb rubbing over his shaking wrist as he watches Dennis’s face. Dennis stares down at Mac’s hand as if no one has ever touched him there before. ‘Everything’s okay. You know that, right?’

Dennis looks back up at him.

‘Mac, I need to talk to you about something,’ he forces out, trying to sound firm and not like he’s about the melt into a fucking puddle on the ground. Mac’s eyes follow the movements of his lips, so attentive it makes Dennis’s skin feel rubbed raw. How can they be doing this here? How can Mac be looking at him like this, in front of everyone? How can Dennis be _letting him?_ ‘But I think maybe we should go –’

‘Oh, Dennis, hey! Didn’t know you were back in town, man. When’d you get here?’

A flicker goes over Mac’s face and he pulls his hand back. Dennis frowns, craning around him to see Rex entering the bar. He gives an inward eye roll. This guy gets more fucking jacked every time they meet. Who needs a body like that? He looks like a Ken doll who swallowed a bodybuilder.

‘Hi,’ he says shortly. Can’t Rex see they’re in the middle of something? What kind of asshole interrupts out of nowhere like that? ‘We were actually just –’

‘We didn’t know he was coming back,’ Dee jumps in hurriedly, and Dennis nearly rotates his neck 180 degrees just so he can glare at her. She gives him a strained smile. ‘No idea. Did we, Charlie?’

She elbows Charlie sharply in the side.

‘Ow! Uh, I mean, no, we didn’t,’ he agrees, rubbing his side and looking a little abused. Dee’s making huge, meaningful eyes at Dennis, which he might have been able to make sense of if all his thought processes weren’t currently taken up with the way Mac is staring down at the floor right now. He hasn’t looked up since Rex came into the bar.

‘Well,’ Dennis starts slowly, a roiling sensation spreading through his stomach, ‘it was kind of a spur of the moment thing, to be honest with you. Which was actually what I was trying to talk to Mac about, so if we could just –’

‘He wanted it to be a surprise,’ Dee jumps in again. ‘Didn’t you, Dennis?’

Mac gives an unsteady laugh, making Dennis jump.

‘Which it was,’ he says, looking up. ‘It really was. You got us there, bro.’

Dennis blinks, waiting for his brain to come up with something useful. But nothing comes, and Mac’s eyes only skate over him, dragging on whatever he sees there before he fixes a smile on his face and turns around to look at Rex. ‘We were just, uh, catching up.’

‘Yeah?’ Rex smiles. The unexpected warmth in his expression when he looks at Mac that is giving Dennis a very, very bad feeling. ‘Well, I can come back later, if you wanted –’

‘That would be great,’ Dennis interjects, aiming for smooth rather than desperate. Dee’s enormously unsubtle cough behind him suggests he might have missed the mark. He shakes it off, staring at the back of Mac’s head and willing him to turn around. ‘Right, Mac?’

Mac turns back to him for a second and Dennis can _see_ the momentary softening of his expression before he shutters, turning back to Rex.

‘No, it’s fine,’ he says, voice neutral, kind, and suddenly a million miles away from Dennis. ‘We can catch up later. We’ve got that class now, right, Rex?’

‘Right,’ Rex says, still grinning, and then he leans in and – kisses Mac. He kisses him. About two feet away from Dennis, with Mac’s hand still resting on the bar between them. Mac has to tilt his head up to reach Rex. His eyes are closed, Rex’s hand resting lightly on his cheek. They must do it a lot to look that comfortable together. They must do it all the time.  

Dennis is dimly aware that he’s staring but he can’t stop it, or fix it, or say anything, or move. He’s frozen in place.

When Mac pulls back, his eyes flash over to Dennis and then quickly skitter away, like something small and injured.

‘We’ll talk later, yeah?’ Mac asks, directing the question to Dennis’s left arm, at which Dennis digs up something resembling composure.

‘Right,’ he says, distantly proud of how his voice is only a little hoarse. ‘Right, yeah. We’ll catch up later.’

Mac gives him a small smile before he turns away, joining hands with Rex as they leave the bar together. The door shuts on their low voices, a brief burst of Rex’s deep laugh drifting back inside in a staccato rhythm as the doors swing open, shut, open, shut.

‘Damn,’ Charlie says, a low whistle into the silence. ‘Did anyone else feel that? Like a storm’s about to hit or something, that tension in the air –’

‘Everybody felt that, honey,’ Dee says briskly. ‘They felt that in fucking New Jersey.’

‘Yeah, shit,’ Frank agrees. ‘That was awkward.’

‘Was it?’ Dennis asks calmly. He’s pretty pleased with the way his voice doesn’t shake, doesn’t fold. He’d wondered how it would go, seeing Mac again, and well, now he knows. Now he knows, and that’s that. Mac and Rex are just going around kissing now, and having a relationship, and not warning anyone about it. Which is fine. Completely fine. Dennis is fine. ‘I didn’t think it was awkward at all.’

‘Really? ‘Cause I thought you were gonna kill Rex, man,’ Charlie says, wide-eyed. ‘You looked like you were gonna snap a pool cue and take him out right there. Not that you could have, of course, guy’s built like a brick shithouse –’

‘I reckon Dennis could take him,’ Dee says seriously, folding her arms across her chest. ‘In one of his rages? You betcha. He’d scratch his eyes right out of their sockets.’

‘I’ll take that bet,’ Frank jumps in. ‘You’re a fool, but I’ll take it.’

‘It’s irrelevant, because nobody is fighting anyone,’ Dennis snaps, then takes a deep breath. ‘I didn’t launch myself at Rex armed with only half a pool cue, although thanks for that visual, Charlie.’

Charlie gives a mock bow.

‘I handled it like an adult,’ Dennis says, ignoring Dee’s snort of derision. ‘Which is how I’m going to handle the rest of this.’

‘What rest of this?’ Dee asks suspiciously. ‘There is no ‘rest of this’, you just said it wasn’t awkward, you aren’t angry –’

‘I did _not_ say I wasn’t angry,’ Dennis corrects. He’s vaguely aware of a vein pulsing in his temple. ‘I said I wasn’t going to fight him. There’s a whole world of sabotage out there that doesn’t involve physical violence, Dee.’

‘Oh no,’ Dee says, a warning tone in her voice. ‘Oh no, you don’t, Dennis.’

‘Oh yes, I do,’ Dennis spits back belligerently.

‘No,’ Dee says more firmly, as if that’s ever been an incentive for Dennis to listen to her about anything. ‘You should leave it alone, Dennis.’

‘Why?’

‘You know why,’ she says, glaring.

‘No, I don’t.’

She sighs, and Charlie frowns, looking between the two of them.

‘I’m sorry, I’m confused,’ he interrupts, holding up his hands. ‘Are we actually talking about this now? The Mac and Dennis thing? Is it actually like, on the table for discussion?’

‘Looks like it,’ Dee says at the same moment Dennis says, loudly, ‘ _No_.’

‘Because like,’ Charlie starts, and Dennis puts his head in his hands, ‘I just think you might have missed your chance, dude, you know? Mac was all over you for like months before you left, and he wanted to raise Brian Junior with you and all, and then you just broke his heart like it was nothing, Dennis! But now he’s got a new boyfriend, so you should probably just accept that and –’

‘I don’t have to accept anything,’ Dennis snaps, irritated at how Charlie’s words are echoing around his skull. They’re going to be fun to try and ignore later, when he’s staring up at the ceiling waiting to fall asleep. ‘This isn’t over until I say it is.’

‘Looks to me like it’s already over, man,’ Charlie says, ruthless, and when Dennis looks up in disbelief they’re all watching him, something cast iron and judgmental in each of their expressions.

‘You’re choosing Rex over me?’ he asks, his voice coming out almost embarrassingly whiny. ‘Is that really what’s happening here?’

Dee rolls her eyes.

‘Good to know the time away didn’t turn you into less of a drama queen,’ she sighs. ‘We’re not choosing Rex over you, dumbass. We’re just saying don’t mess with it like you always do, okay? You’ve been gone a long time, and you had to know that might mean –’

‘Six months,’ Dennis interrupts with a disbelieving laugh. ‘Six measly months, and I’ve been replaced. Is that really all it took? And anyway, what do you mean mess with it like _I_ always do? I think you’re conveniently forgetting all the times every single one of us has fucked around with people we were dating or stalking or otherwise attached to – look at Charlie, for instance. Did you ever read him the riot act when he went after the waitress’s boyfriends?’

He stares at Dee, eyebrows raised.

‘Um. Yes? Many times, I did that many times,’ Dee says after a minute, her eyes narrowing. Her lips curl in a slight smile. ‘Wait. Are you saying that Mac is your waitress, Dennis?’

‘That’s beside the point,’ Dennis tells her, ignoring the flush rising along his cheeks. ‘For one thing, the waitress isn’t even hot, so –’

‘Oh, my God,’ Dee says, sounding on the verge of laughter, sharing an aggravatingly amused look with Charlie. ‘He is. He _totally_ is. Oh man, you are so screwed –’

‘I don’t know why you’re laughing!’ Dennis whirls on Charlie, who pokes himself in the chest like, _who, me?_ ‘Yes, you! You’re the one I’m talking about here!’

‘And you’re the one who’s in deep, my man,’ Charlie tells him cheerfully. ‘Honestly, dude, don’t even pretend like you don’t deserve it. You walked away, Dennis! For like, half a year. Sure, Mac moped around for a while, but then he got over it, and him and Rex are pretty happy, so I think you should probably just –’

‘I’m not going to _probably just_ anything,’ Dennis hisses, and then blinks at the bemused looks at their faces. ‘Look, I don’t need to justify anything to you, I don’t – I don’t have to listen to this.’ He grabs hold of his suitcase and starts yanking it towards the door. ‘I’m out of here.’

‘Sure,’ Dee’s amused voice follows him. ‘Oh, and you should probably know Mac barely lives at your old place anymore. He’s round at Rex’s most of the time, so you should have it all to yourself. Have fun settling back in!’

\---

The door swings open just as easily as it used to, despite Dennis’s trepidation that Mac might have changed the locks. The light from the streetlamps still falls in ugly stripes across the bare floor; the couch still sinks just as readily under his weight. Even the knick-knacks are just as pointless and stupidly placed as they used to be, taking up useful space. Mac really did think of every detail, Dennis has to give him that. It had been horrifying at the time, of course – the sensation that they hadn’t moved forward at all, Mac so relentlessly committed to keeping them stuck in the same endless moment that he couldn’t even fucking redecorate. But now all Dennis sees is the effort Mac put into every square inch of the space, and the look on his face when Dennis threw it back at him: the wide blank terrified gap that expanded inside Dennis’s stomach at what it had to mean.

Dennis sits on the couch and stares up at the ceiling for a long time before he remembers he agreed to call Mandy after he landed, and considering that was hours ago she’s probably at medium-levels of freaking out by now. Pulling his phone out, he sighs at how right he is: 6 texts, 10 missed calls.

‘Oh jeez, Dennis!’ she answers when he calls back, so loud Dennis pulls the phone away from his ear instinctively, a sunshine-bright bolt of good cheer.

He frowns and leans back on the couch with a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose against the headache he can feel pooling at the base of his skull.

‘Yep,’ he agrees tiredly. ‘It’s me. I’m here, I got here safe, so.’

Christ, not even Brian Junior would be able to misread a voice that flat. He tries to inject some life into it, painfully aware of the expectant quality of Mandy’s silence.

‘How is everyone?’ she asks eagerly. ‘How was your flight? Did you sleep much? You must be so tired. Have you seen Dee and Charlie? What about –’

‘Wow, one at a time,’ Dennis interrupts sharply.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ she laughs, nervous. ‘I know you’re – well. You must be busy settling back in. We’re missing you here already.’

Dennis rubs a hand over his face.

‘Yeah?’ he asks. ‘Thanks. Sorry, I’m – it’s fine. I’m just – I’m tired, I – um. The flight was fine. Everyone here is fine, they’re all good, they’re – yeah. It’s great.’

‘Good, good,’ Mandy says, clearly waiting for more. Dennis remains stubbornly silent until she speaks again.

‘Have you seen Mac?’ she asks tentatively.

‘Yes,’ Dennis says shortly.

‘And?’ she presses.

‘And, he’s, he’s –’ Dennis thumps his head against the back of the couch a couple of times. ‘He looks really good,’ he says eventually in a defeated tone of voice. ‘Like. I don’t even know what he must be lifting these days. It’s completely obscene.’

‘Oh, wow,’ Mandy says, hushed.  

‘Yeah,’ Dennis sighs.

‘Well then, that’s great!’ Mandy says. She pauses for a second, and when she speaks again there’s a catch in her voice. Dennis’s eyes open in surprise at the realisation that she’s on the edge of tears. ‘I’m really happy for you, Dennis.’

‘Oh, hey,’ he says awkwardly. ‘You don’t need to –’

‘No, I’m sorry, it’s fine,’ she says, laughing with a sniff. ‘I just – I really wanted this to work out for you, Dennis. I know you weren’t happy here.’

‘It wasn’t you,’ he reminds her. ‘It wasn’t Brian, either. It was just me, Mandy. You know that, right?’

‘Yeah,’ she says, a note of slyness in her voice now. ‘It’s not me, it’s you, huh?’

That startles a laugh out of him.

‘Right,’ he says, sinking back against the couch. He watches his own reflection in the TV, his eyes flat and glittering in the near-dark. It occurs to him to be dimly surprised the TV’s even still here, considering how many miscreants live around here who must have known Mac was barely around. He makes a mental note to ask the gang about it tomorrow.

Tomorrow. When he’ll have to go to the bar again, and see Mac, and remember how badly he fucked up.

‘So you’re glad you went back home?’ Mandy asks quietly, and Dennis tilts the phone away from his mouth for a second, staring up at the ceiling.

‘Yeah,’ he tells her. ‘Yeah, Mandy. I’m glad.’

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we stan one (1) jealous gay idiot

Mac first told Dennis he loved him when they were sixteen.

They were high on something a few degrees removed from regular weed and they were stumbling, blinking stars out of their eyes, wandering through Philly looking for somewhere that was still open to buy chips. Charlie and Dee were passed out in the den of Dennis and Dee’s house, slumped together on the couch, and Mac’d dragged Dennis out by the belt loops, whisper-shouting about how he had to have sour cream chips or he’d fucking _die,_ dude. He always got the munchies worse than any of them, and he never seemed to get used to being high either, despite being their dealer: it always struck him right between the eyes, turned them into searchlights.

They were singing snatches of Madonna and Bowie and Human League out of key and giggling when their voices echoed back to them, skewed and weird-sounding, reverberating off the concrete. Mac smelled like peppermint all the time back then because Dee’d told him he had terrible breath and no girl was ever going to kiss him like that, so he’d taken to chewing them out of sheer paranoia. The scent mixed weirdly with Dennis’s strawberry chapstick but only if he got close enough to Mac’s mouth to notice it, and if he was that close it probably wasn’t peppermint he was thinking about anyway. The perfect fullness of Mac’s lower lip was a source of perpetual confusion to Dennis back then, and something like covetousness; he told himself that was normal, because after all what self-respecting man wouldn’t be jealous of a lip that easy to line, fill in with lipstick, smooth over with the pad of a thumb? Mac didn’t understand how lucky he was.  

They were wandering through South Philly high as kites like a couple of fucking idiots anyway – it was a miracle they didn’t get mugged – and Mac stopped dead to stare up at a flinching street lamp, blinking like he was seeing the face of God. He grabbed Dennis by the wrist and pointed up at it, and Dennis made this bizarre noise of injured protest at the too-hard grip, like a whistling through his nose mixed with a grunt. It was so weird and funny in the silence of the night that a half-snort half-laugh broke right out of Mac, a crashing wave.

‘Dude,’ Mac said, almost awed. His eyes were _huge_ , his mouth dropped open in surprise.

Dennis looked at him with his eyebrows raised, and then out of nowhere they were cracking the fuck up on the sidewalk in the middle of the night, high-pitched laughter piping out of Dennis so hard he could barely scrape together enough air, wheezing with it. The wheezing only made Mac laugh even harder; he kept pointing at Dennis and Dennis kept weakly swatting him away. Their shoulders bumped together as they laughed, the steam of their hiccupping breaths combining in the icy air – it must have been winter; Dennis remembers the heat of Mac’s hand curled like a brand around the back of his cold neck – and when Dennis started breathing carefully, trying to stop, they caught each other’s eye again and Mac gave that helpless giggle and there was no hope for it. They weren’t even laughing at anything specific anymore, it fed off itself, they fed off each other, Mac’s chest heaving and tears blurring the mascara into a black smudge around Dennis’ eyes. And then came one more stuttering breath from Mac, one more hopeless gasp before he choked out, ‘God, Dennis, I love you.’

It took Dennis at least ten seconds to process what he’d just said, but then it stopped the laughter in his chest like he’d been kicked by a horse. No one had ever said it to him like that before, like they just couldn’t help it, couldn’t keep it in. Not even a _bro_ tacked on the end of it for plausible deniability. Not even a _dude._  

‘I,’ he started, breath jerking out of him in a panicky rush, ‘I,’ and Mac had swallowed hard, _really_ hard, Dennis always remembered that – so hard Dennis actually heard it, like maybe Dennis’s panic had jumped the distance between them and decided to jam up his windpipe too. Everything was suddenly ten times brighter, the air sharper, the cold more savage. A microscope being held up to the moment. Mac was blinking huge at him, eyes begging him to say something, for the love of _fuck_ say something –

But Dennis couldn’t. Can’t. What’s the difference, really? He never could figure out who should have been in charge of that scene, who should have acted different, looked different. Whether it was Mac’s fault for springing it on him like that, or whether he should have been the one to clasp the back of Mac’s neck in his shaky palm, breathe out those words as if it was easy. As if Dennis knew just how much that love was worth, and that Mac was longing to hear it belonged to him.

Mac had saved him the trouble of figuring it out by giving another choking laugh, clapping Dennis on the back.

‘I’m so high,’ he muttered, already looking away, muttering some other dismissive bullshit about not even knowing what he was saying. Like Dennis was stupid enough to buy that. But maybe it didn’t matter either way, because the end result was the same: Dennis never did finish his sentence.

‘You’ve never told him you love him?’ Charlie asks, as if Dennis hasn’t spent the last half an hour painstakingly weaving around the point of this story so he wouldn’t have to spell that out. ‘I mean, that’s accurate for you, but – not even when you were drunk or whatever? That’s kind of cold, dude. He used to tell you he loved you, like, all the time.’

Dennis’s shoulders hunch and he has to exert real effort to get them to straighten out again.

‘I know that, Charlie, but I only told Dee when I thought we were five minutes away from drowning,’ Dennis reminds him through gritted teeth. ‘Do I strike you as someone who finds it particularly easy to share their feelings?’

‘I mean, a little,’ Charlie squints at him. ‘But only when you blow up like a geyser, you know?’

‘Geyser’s a little harsh,’ Dennis mutters, then roll his eyes when Charlie cocks an eyebrow at him. ‘Well, whatever, dude. I’m trying to avoid that now. I’m going to be calm about this, calm and calculated, and I’m – why are you looking at me like that?’

‘No reason,’ Charlie says hastily, then: ‘Well, I’ll leave you to work on that, bro.’

He claps Dennis on the back and takes off, as if communicating his feelings in an orderly, reasonable fashion is something Dennis might be able to take a class for. Although doesn’t therapy kind of count as a feelings class? Dennis had called Karen’s office mid-frantic dash to the airport and promised to check in with her when he got to Philly. She hadn’t sounded remotely surprised by this development. Come to think of it, she had been making some fairly pointed comments in the previous weeks about how she was perfectly happy to conduct phone appointments if necessary. Maybe she was more perceptive than Dennis has been giving her credit for.

He’ll call her back at some point. He’s just got other things to deal with right now. More important obstacles to overcome.

The thing is, for all that Dennis has never been able to say it to Mac, he’s pretty sure Rex would find it easy to say ‘I love you’. If Mac wanted to be told that. Rex probably wouldn’t even hesitate; there’s no room in his head for second thoughts. He’d probably find it as easy as pulling his socks on in the morning. When Mac smiles at him, Rex doesn’t look away, embarrassed. When Mac stands too close, Rex pulls him closer. When Mac talks, even when it’s too loud and too long and about something stupid, Rex listens and doesn’t shout over him, encourages him to finish his train of thought. Rex never tells Mac no, or to shut up, or that he’s stupid. He laughs at all Mac’s jokes, even the ones that aren’t funny.

It’s driving Dennis fucking insane.

‘So Rex is a good boyfriend,’ Dee intones, sounding extremely bored, about a week after Dennis gets back. ‘So what?’

‘Mac can’t possibly be happy with this arrangement,’ Dennis opines to the bar at large. He’s been fixedly polishing the same square foot of the bar for the last twenty minutes now, having begun shortly after Rex picked Mac up for their spin class. They’d kissed when Rex got here, they kissed again when they left. Mac’s eyes crinkled up a little at the edges when they did it. Who fucking needed to see that shit? It was completely unnecessary, shoving it in their faces like that. It was _unsanitary._

Dee and Charlie are sat at the end of the bar watching the circular motion of his hand, looking slightly hypnotized as they listen to Dennis rant. ‘There’s no conflict, no drama. You know as well as I do that Mac thrives on competition, and Rex is so – he’s just so –’

‘Nice?’ Dee guesses. ‘Thoughtful? Communicates at the regular decibel level required for human speech?’

‘Boring,’ Dennis corrects her sternly. He frowns, the low-level anxiety always churning up his guts these days throwing out an extra twist for good measure. ‘Anyone can do nice, Dee. Anyone can do thoughtful, that’s why they sell flowers at every goddamn gas station in the country. Thoughtful takes no effort at all. I could do that, if I wanted. But I don’t, because it’s boring, and it’s got no spark, it’s got no _fire_ –’

‘Bullshit,’ Dee returns, leaning forward against the bar with her eyes narrowed. ‘You just want Mac to come crawling back to you without you having to make any effort.’

Dennis opens his mouth to point out that flying back across the country with his tail between his legs had required a pretty significant amount of effort, but then he remembers he’s practicing a policy of not admitting to his mistakes, and shuts it again. He goes back to staring at the woodgrain. None of his efforts have made a perceivable difference to the state of the bar top, but he finds he doesn’t really mind. Being made to do Charlie work as penance for ‘abandoning the gang’ – their choice of words, not his – at least has the benefit of distracting him from how his life is completely falling apart.

_Has_ completely fallen apart.

‘It’s not about that,’ he says instead, glaring at Dee. ‘Rex doesn’t even know him, not really. I mean come on, spin class? What kind of pussy workout is that?’

‘I think you’re missing the point of dating, dude,’ Charlie says doubtfully. ‘Isn’t that when you like, get to know each other and stuff? You’re not supposed to know everything about the person right away?’

He slides a sideways glance at Dee for confirmation of this, as if she knows her head from her ass when it comes to dating, She nods, patting him on the hand, and he settles back in his seat contentedly.

‘Nope,’ Dennis snaps. ‘Wrong again. I can count on one hand the people I’ve dated that I’ve actually wanted to get to know. I could count that on _one finger._ It’s not about that, it’s never about that, it’s about sex, and I don’t know why people insist on pretending otherwise.’

‘Maybe that perspective says more about you than it does about other people,’ Dee suggests, then gives him a sickeningly sweet smile. ‘Just a thought.’

‘I didn’t ask for your thoughts,’ Dennis replies peevishly, sparing a moment to fondly remember the version of Dee who’d bugged him in North Dakota. She might have been fucking annoying, but he’d been able to ignore her all he liked when she was a figment of his imagination. Back here she’s just showing him up like it’s her job now, repeatedly skewering him verbally while he can do nothing but grind his teeth. She’s really loving the Charlie work thing, ordering him around every chance she gets, and the cherry on top is that Dennis can’t even object to it because he deserves every filthy, degrading second. He knows it, they all know it. The arbitration had taken less than five minutes. Frank hadn’t even bothered leaving the john for it.

‘Motion carried!’ he’d bellowed from his stall, then laughed himself hoarse at his own joke. Dennis wasn’t exactly doing cartwheels about any aspect of his return to Philly so far, but that had been a definite low point.    

‘If you’re going to treat us like a peanut gallery you’d better get used to us acting like one,’ Dee tells Dennis now.

‘Not me,’ Frank calls from the back room, giving Dennis a brief but extremely unpleasant flashback. ‘I want you all to stop talking about this, forever.’

‘Shut up, Frank,’ Dee shouts, then at normal volume: ‘Anyway, if you think dating’s just about sex, I’ve got a riddle for you.’

Dennis raises a reluctantly intrigued eyebrow.

‘Mac and Rex have clearly been banging it out all up and down town, but they don’t seem sick of each other yet. What d’you think about that, hmm?’

Dennis glares at her. His fingernails scrape against the surface of the bar, undoing all his good work.

‘You okay over there, bro?’ Dee asks innocently. ‘Getting kind of stuck on that one bit of the bar, there, aren’t ya? Might want to mix it up a little. Say, I think the urinals might be looking a little ropey, what about taking a look?’

‘I hate you,’ Dennis says in a low voice with a lot of feeling.

Dee just rolls her eyes, grinning.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ she says smugly. ‘Like I’ve never heard that one before.’

\---

The thing is. The thing _is._ However happy Rex might be making Mac, Dennis knows from the bottom of his bitter, seething heart that he could do it better. He _was_ doing it better – for years! – before it got all fucked up and weird and hard to breathe whenever Mac got too close to him, when Mac started asking for too much without even saying the words. It’s not Dennis’s fault he panicked, as cruel as it might have seemed at the time. However hard it was for him to come out of the closet, Mac never could hide how he felt: you could see it every time he looked at Dennis, how his face just opened up, the naked devotion in his eyes. It was embarrassing, it was too much – how could someone that transparent ever understand how hard it was for Dennis to be seen? What the hell did Mac know, about how afraid you could be of yourself?

Dennis remembers the summer they turned thirty, existing in the vertigo of a hundred possible beginnings that never resolved into anything more concrete than false starts. Mac’s heated gaze catching on Dennis over and over, impossible to avoid; the one that always sent something childishly, helplessly pleased fluttering in Dennis’s stomach. The sensation that all he had to do was step forward, fix Mac with a stare for long enough. All he had to do was give him the right moment, and then everything would change.

But he couldn’t, and he never did, and nothing did change. And then all that possibility had tipped over, somehow, into something scary; something that would cost Dennis more than he could bear to give up. Something that felt too large and unwieldy to trust, no matter how strong the foundations.

Mac can’t just have forgotten all that. Six months and a stupid mistake doesn’t erase decades of history. All Dennis has to do is get them back there, remind Mac of how things used to be. He has to make it clear to Mac that he’s the better option, and then Mac will come back to him. Simple as that.

It would help if he saw Mac around without Rex for longer than five minutes at a time, though. They hang out in the bar a couple of nights a week together, just shooting the shit with the gang, Rex clearly straining his last brain cell trying to keep up with their jokes. This doesn’t provide as many opportunities for Dennis to demonstrate his value as he’d hoped, considering the gang insist on spending the entire time ordering him around like he’s the unholy offspring of Charlie and Cricket.

‘This was not in the contract,’ Dennis gets out through gritted teeth, bracing himself on the door frame as Charlie puts the boot in his back. His fingernails are digging into the splintering wood and he winces at the thought of all the splinters he’s going to be digging out later. Better than the alternative, though: he stares down into the darkness of the cellar and redoubles his efforts to _cling_.

‘Rat duty is Charlie work, Dennis, everybody knows that,’ Charlie gasps out in response, still shoving at his back with a surprising amount of strength. ‘Now just let go, and everything will be fine –’

‘It will not be fine, Charlie,’ Dennis snaps, frantically scrabbling at the brickwork even as he loses his hold. ‘You know I can’t stand rats, dude – _Charlie, no_ –’

At least Mac hadn’t been there for that particular indignity, although honestly Dennis would have taken it over no Mac at all. Rex comes by the bar on his own sometimes just to hang out, but Mac seems to be giving it a wide berth, and Dennis isn’t sure whether that’s something that happened while he was away or whether it’s a direct result of him coming back. No one seems inclined to explain it to him, and Dennis would rather eat shit and die than actually ask Mac himself, when just the thought of the answer he might get makes him feel nauseous.

He honestly isn’t sure if dealing with Rex alone is better or worse than dealing with him and Mac as a couple. At least it means he doesn’t have to see them together, but he does have to hear Rex talk about Mac, which is possibly even more irritating than watching them hold hands.

‘He’s just so smart, dude,’ Rex gushes to Charlie and Frank one night, seemingly oblivious to the respective looks of disbelief and boredom on their faces. ‘He’s like, way smarter than anyone else I’ve ever dated.’

‘Mac?’ Dennis asks loudly, over Dee’s noise of outrage. He sets down his mop and props his elbow on it, staring at Rex. He can handle hearing about how handsome Mac is or how ripped he’s getting – because not even Dennis is capable of denying that, at this point – but this is another fucking level. ‘You’re talking about Mac? The Mac we all know? The one that works here? That Mac?’

‘Yeah,’ Rex says, frowning. ‘He’s super smart, Dennis. He knows so many things, and he’s always like, reading the Bible and stuff. Always going to church.’

‘Going to church does not make you smart,’ Dennis informs him. ‘If anything, it makes you the opposite. With the amount of time Mac’s spent there, it’s a miracle he hasn’t keeled over from all the air in between his ears.’

Rex, predictably, frowns some more as he tries to get his head around this particular retort. Dennis rolls his eyes.

‘He’s saying Mac’s dumb,’ Dee says after a long moment of pained silence. ‘Don’t take it personally, Rex. Dennis would absolutely say it to his face.’

‘Yeah, he says it all the time,’ Charlie confirms.

‘Well, he shouldn’t,’ Rex says, still frowning.

Dennis stiffens, letting go of the mop and letting it fall to the ground with a clatter. Charlie sits up a little straighter, eyes darting between Rex and Dennis as him and Frank quietly pass a bowl of peanuts back and forth in the background.

‘I’ll talk as much shit about Mac as I like,’ Dennis snaps, folding his arms across his chest. ‘At least I’ve known him for longer than five minutes.’

Rex raises an unimpressed eyebrow.

‘We’ve been friends for years,’ he points out. ‘We met when you guys were like, what? 32? 33? Like, right here in this bar, dude.’

‘That is beside the point,’ Dennis tells him, aware he’s flushing a slow uncontrollable shade of red but determined to get his point across nonetheless. ‘He never talked about you before you were together. Never mentioned you to me. Not _once_.’

‘Oh, he did though, that’s not playing fair,’ Dee interjects, then flattens back against the counter when Dennis shoots a glare at her. ‘Jesus Christ.’

‘Oh, yeah, he did,’ Charlie confirms. He shrugs when Dennis turns the glare on him, popping a handful of peanuts in his mouth. ‘What? It’s true.’

‘Why are you saying all this stuff?’ Rex wonders aloud. ‘What’s going on?’

Dennis grins viciously. It’s such a perfect opportunity to point out how Rex will never be on their level, how clearly ill-equipped he is to deal with Mac in his natural habitat –

And that’s the point at which Mac arrives back from his workout.

‘Oh hey, man,’ he says as he comes through the door, smiling at Rex all happy and surprised. ‘Didn’t know you were gonna be here.’

‘I wanted to see you,’ Rex says, grinning back. His voice softens, tension seeping out of his shoulders.

Dennis grits his teeth and turns back to the bar so he won’t have to watch them kiss.

\---

So clearly, Dennis is doing Mac a favour here. Clearly, Mac needs saving from Rex and also, tangentially, from his own terrible decision-making. To Dennis’s consternation, though, Charlie and Dee are too busy giving a shit about each other to help him make that clear.

‘No,’ Dee says firmly. ‘ _No,_ Charlie.’

‘What? It’s not –’

‘It _is_ unreasonable and I am _not_ –’

‘I don’t think it’s a lot to ask, Dee, not when your boyfriend’s wellbeing is at stake!’

‘Your wellbeing gets more at stake every time we have this conversation,’ Dee hisses, waving a dishrag in his face. ‘For the last fucking time, we are not adopting a dozen cats and allowing them to roam wild in my apartment just so you’ll have less trouble sleeping.’

‘But you love cats!’ Charlie protests, apparently completely unperturbed by the insane glint in Dee’s eye. ‘You let me put like a ton of them in your wall that one time.’

Dennis snorts at the obvious euphemism there, but neither of them even look up. He sighs. This is why whenever the CharDee thing used to rear its ugly head, he’d always been pretty quick to smack it back down, put everyone back in their place. It upsets the natural rhythm of the gang, distorts everyone’s relationships to each other and reframes the hierarchies of loyalty so that Dennis is somewhere in the middle rather than at the top, as he should be. It’s really very aggravating, and is becoming more tiresome to navigate by the day, but he’d wondered about the possibilities of breaking them up and come to the conclusion that not only would it distract everyone even more from what he needed them focused on, it would also probably come across as kind of mean-spirited, and he just can’t afford that kind of bad publicity right now.

‘I’ll take that,’ Karen had said when he’d finally called her up and shared these thoughts with her a few days ago. She’d sounded almost insultingly impressed. ‘Deciding not to do something which might benefit you, because of the harm it might cause others. That’s a real step forward, Dennis. Although I do question the narcissism of your assumption that you’d be able to successfully sabotage their relationship despite having only arrived back in Philadelphia two weeks ago, considering how much the balance of your friendship seems to have shifted.’

‘Do you want me to tell you how I’d do it?’ Dennis had asked, a hint of threat in his voice. ‘Because honestly, that’s only going to make me want to do it more.’

‘Are you trying to intimidate me again?’ Karen had asked, absent-minded. ‘Or shall we move on? I’d like to discuss your attempts to cultivate a hobby or interest outside either the bar or the gang, which are currently non-existent.’

‘I don’t need another hobby!’ he told her again, as he’s been telling her, repeatedly, every time they talk. ‘I already have something to keep me busy.’

‘Obsessing over your relationship with Mac is not a hobby,’ she told him sternly. ‘I’m talking physical activity of some kind, or at the very least an attempt at learning a skill that has no discernible purpose. I’m talking line-dancing, Dennis. Synchronised swimming. Cross-country running. Scrapbooking. I really don’t care what it is, but don’t call me again until you’ve attempted to foster an interest in something that happens outside the four walls of Paddy’s.’

And then she’d put the phone down on him. Dennis is fairly sure this isn’t the orthodox way for a therapist to behave, but it’s not like he’s going to ask anyone in the gang to confirm that. She’s going to be waiting a long time for the call that tells her Dennis has taken up line-dancing, that’s all he can say.

Mac would have laughed at the cat-in-the-wall euphemism if he’d been here, Dennis knows it. He’d love laughing at Charlie and Dee with Dennis – he’d have caught Dennis’s eye, and he’d have smiled, and Dennis would be one more step out of this hellish limbo, this nowhere space where nothing works like it should, no one listens to him and Mac is never around.

‘I did not _let you_ put a dozen cats in my wall, Charlie, you just did it!’ Dee is half-shrieking, when Dennis zones back into their conversation. ‘Without asking me! And we’re not going down that road again, so –’

‘But I can’t sleep, Dee,’ Charlie whines, actually scuffing his feet against the bar in his petulance. ‘I need the noise or I can’t sleep.’

‘So don’t sleep,’ Dee snaps. ‘No cats.’

‘What do you think, bro?’ Charlie turns to Dennis in clear desperation.

‘Who’s the big spoon?’ Dennis asks.

They both blink at him.

‘What’s –’ Dee starts, just as Charlie scoffs, ‘How’s that relevant?’

‘It’s not,’ Dennis clarifies. ‘I don’t give a shit about any of this. I was actually thinking about something else, but now I’m wondering which one of you is the big spoon. Dee, right? Because of her giant man hands and feet?’

Both Charlie and Dee turn severely unflattering shades of puce, avoiding each other’s gaze so overtly Dennis is surprised they don’t physically hurl themselves in opposite directions just for the sake of follow-through.

‘It’s Dee,’ Dennis says with deep satisfaction in his voice. ‘I knew it.’

‘It’s none of your business, is what it is,’ Charlie says loudly. ‘Anyway, back to the cat problem –’

‘Why don’t you just get a dog?’ Dennis suggests, rolling his eyes. ‘They make as much noise and mess as a dozen cats, and Dee prefers them.’

‘I’ve never said I preferred dogs,’ Dee protests, but her brow furrows. ‘Although that could work. Not one of those little yappy things though, right? We want something with a little muscle behind it.’

‘Something a little wolfy,’ Charlie agrees. They smile at each other, and Dennis fervently wishes he hadn’t said anything. Honest to God, it’s like he’s not even there.

‘Dog it is,’ Frank says, coming out of the back office as if he’s had any part in the discussion. ‘Maybe now you can stop arguing about cats all goddamn day, how’s that?’

‘Yeah, I’ll drink to that,’ Dee agrees, grabbing a bottle of tequila from behind the bar and pouring out shots. ‘Dennis, you want a shot? Oh, uh –’

She falters, caught short at the reminder of Dennis’s sobriety like she has been every fucking time drinking has come up since he came back. Which is fairly often, considering they own and run a bar. The first few times, Dennis had protested it was only mostly-sobriety, but that got him even weirder looks, so eventually he just stopped mentioning that part. It’s not like he’s going to AA or anything anyway, the stakes aren’t exactly high. There’s no one to care if he does fall off the wagon.

‘It’s fine,’ Dennis pastes on a smile, already reaching for the pack of smokes in his left pocket, patting down the familiar shape of the box with an internal sigh of relief. ‘I was about to head out anyway.’

Dee seems to struggle with something for a second, then just nods.

‘Okay,’ she says neutrally. ‘If you’re sure.’

Her gaze follows him out of the bar and into the back alley, where he can barely light up fast enough. It’s the one thing the gang can’t quite believe of him now that he’s back, Dennis knows. In a weird way he understands how this could be the sticking point, after everything they’ve been through: the thing with Mac had lingered underneath the surface of everything, the river running through their entire shitty life together, but the drinking was right up front. No denying that. The drinking wasn’t just part of Dennis, it _was_ him. It was all of them.

But now it’s not, as if Dennis needed another reminder that he’s now something separate, an amputated limb that can’t quite reattach itself.

‘Hey, buddy.’

Dennis’s gaze snaps up from the ground at the sound of Mac’s voice. He’s got his gym bag over his shoulder, gleam of sweat covering his arms and collarbones. He kind of smells bad, like he came straight here without showering but he’s smiling at Dennis, a little hesitant. His hand is tight around the strap of his bag, as if he needs it to ground him.

‘Hey,’ Dennis says after a few seconds too long. He clears his throat, hoping his cheeks don’t look as warm as they feel. ‘Didn’t hear you coming up.’

‘You looked pretty absorbed,’ Mac comments. He gives Dennis a once-over so brief Dennis might have imagined it before he clears his throat and drops his bag on the ground. ‘What’s up?’

Dennis snorts, taking a drag.

‘Is that what we’re doing now? Talking about our feelings?’ he asks, then winces at how bitter it sounds when it was supposed to be a joke. Not like that’s ever put Mac off before, though.

Mac rolls his eyes, hint of a grin around his mouth. He shifts his weight to his heels and folds his arms across his chest, making his biceps bulge. Dennis coughs in a lungful of smoke and tries to concentrate on Mac’s face instead so he might have a chance of holding up his end of the conversation, although it’s not like that’s any less distracting.

‘Okay, pretend like you don’t wanna tell me,’ Mac says, arching a goading eyebrow. ‘You love talking about yourself more than anyone I’ve ever met, dude. Not that much has changed.’

Dennis doesn’t really know what to say to that. He wishes, for one painfully intense moment, that Mac could see right through him the way Dennis could always see through Mac – right through to the burning, hungry heart of him. Then Dennis wouldn’t have to say anything at all. He wouldn’t even have to move. Mac would just lay eyes on him and know, and Dennis wouldn’t have to feel like this anymore, like he’s hiding in plain sight, like he might suffocate if Mac doesn’t reach out and touch him.

‘So, Charlie and Dee,’ he says eventually, his voice a little hoarse, because he can’t say any of that. ‘How did that happen, huh?’

Mac blinks at the change of subject but goes along gamely enough.

‘Uh, pretty much right after you left, I guess? So gross at first, dude, you have _no_ idea –’

‘At first?’ Dennis grins, swoop in his stomach at Mac’s commiserating grimace. ‘It’s gross now, Mac, it’s always gonna be gross –’

‘Charlie was so smug, like anyone was gonna give him a medal for banging Dee, you know?’

‘They deserve medals for banging each other,’ Dennis says sagely, and Mac gives a sharp laugh.

‘Yeah,’ he agrees. His eyes drift to the cigarette dangling from Dennis’s fingertips. ‘So you’re smoking again, huh?’

Dennis nods slowly, staring down at the glowing tip.

‘Yeah,’ he says. He takes another drag and painstakingly doesn’t watch Mac as he blows out a thin stream of smoke. Much as Dee had taunted him when they were teenagers for taking up smoking just so he’d look cool, the joke was on her because that kind of fringe benefit turned out not to have an expiration date, unlike the rest of Dennis’s appeal. The effect is lost the moment you make it clear you want them to watch, obviously; it works much better if Mac thinks Dennis just looks that aloof without any effort. ‘Not really drinking anymore, so.’

He holds the cigarette up and they both stare at it.

‘Kind of ironic, huh,’ he says, voice harder than he’d like. ‘Lungs or liver?’

Mac gives him a small smile, leaning back against the alley wall.

‘Do what you gotta do, right?’ he asks. He isn’t watching the cigarette anymore; he’s watching Dennis’s face. It’s making something in Dennis’s stomach squirm around, and he’s having trouble identifying if it’s in a good way or not. ‘If that’s what you needed to get sober, then that’s what it took.’

Dennis frowns down at the ground, taking another, harsher drag.

‘You’re the first person who’s said that,’ he says after a minute. ‘Everyone else is just like oh, aren’t you just trading one vice for another? As if they’re –’

‘Even remotely similar,’ Mac finishes with a grin, and they both kind of laugh.

‘Yeah,’ Dennis agrees, smiling a little grimly. ‘I mean, I know it’s not great, but. It is what it is.’

‘You don’t have to tell me that, man,’ Mac says. He gestures at the gym bag on the ground. ‘You ever wondered why I’m barely around anymore?’

‘ _Yes,_ ’ Dennis hisses out immediately, and Mac gives a startled bark of laughter. Dennis’s cheeks flush immediately but it’s worth it for the way Mac’s eyes are warm, wide with surprised pleasure. ‘Yes, I’ve been fucking wondering. Where the hell are you, man? I’ve like, barely seen you since I got back. You never hang out at the bar anymore.’

‘I’m at the gym,’ Mac says easily, cricking his neck from side to side. His smile fades a little, into something more serious. ‘It’s what I do, you know. To try and stay sober.’

‘What, like. Every time you want a drink?’ Dennis asks, nonplussed. That sounds fucking hellish. That sounds worse than smoking, that’s for sure. No wonder Mac looks like he’s carved from stone these days.

‘Pretty much,’ Mac says wryly. ‘I mean, obviously I can’t – not _every_ time – but the gym’s 24 hour, and Rex has got a pretty sweet set-up in his apartment, if I can’t sleep or whatever. It works out.’

‘ _You_ work out,’ Dennis replies reflexively, making Mac grin. ‘Okay, but – can I ask what made you go there, man? I mean, I got sober ‘cause of Brian Junior, even though that didn’t exactly pan out, but. Um. Shit. I mean, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want, I just –’

‘It’s whatever,’ Mac says, waving a hand over Dennis’s protests. Dennis shoves the cigarette back in his mouth just to shut himself up, although it’s almost burned out. Mac blows out a long breath. ‘I guess when you left it kind of … rearranged some stuff? I wasn’t getting on great with my mom, and things were all weird between Charlie and Dee, and there was that whole thing with the waitress, and –’

‘Wait, what thing with the waitress?’ Dennis interrupts, but Mac is still going, talking over him.

‘And then when I started dating Rex, it just kind of happened, you know?’

Dennis stares at him, remembering the long nights of withdrawal he’d clawed through in his hotel room. The ringing silence he’d existed inside, alone. The way he still isn’t quite free, because wine with dinner doesn’t really count, right? Those shots on the plane back to Philly were just a way of calming his nerves, right?

‘No, I don’t know,’ he says slowly. ‘It didn’t just happen to me, Mac.’

‘Right, right,’ Mac replies quickly. ‘And I’m not saying it was easy or anything – especially not the shakes, God – but it was easier when I wasn’t here, you know?’

Dennis nods. He can relate to that, at least.

‘And Rex doesn’t really drink either, these days, so.’

‘Oh, God,’ Dennis says, loudly. ‘Tell me you’re not one of those fucking straight edge vegan gays now.’

Mac grins.

‘Why?’ he asks mischievously. ‘They got a lot of those in North Dakota?’

‘How the fuck would I know?’ Dennis retorts.

‘Oh, someone’s touchy,’ Mac says, his voice soft and a little sexy in combination with the way his gaze is lingering over the line of Dennis’s shoulders. Dennis catches his breath, flare of heat lighting up in his stomach. Mac’s eyes get a little narrower. ‘It’s been a while, huh?’

‘It’s been fucking millennia,’ Dennis says shortly, begrudgingly grinning when Mac starts crowing, making such a meal of it that Dennis can’t help laughing at himself. ‘Okay, shut up, Jesus Christ.’

Mac’s eyes soften as Dennis’s laughter trails off slowly, warmth threading through his chest. And there is it, the look that Mac has always saved for Dennis – a breath away from awed, just adoring enough to be surprising in someone so often hostile. It’s still there, still unfurling like a language only the two of them know how to speak. There’s no room in that look for anyone else, no space for other love to grow. How can Mac even pretend he doesn’t want this? How can Mac still look at him like that and not act on it? He used to think Mac was weak for wanting it so openly – embarrassing, pathetic – but now the shoe’s on the other foot, he can’t believe how hard it is to hold back. Every time they’re in the same ten-foot radius he feels it, the kinetic potential, the kiss waiting to happen. Is this what it’s been like for Mac, all these years? Is this just Dennis’s turn?

‘How come the apartment’s still intact, bro?’ Dennis asks after a long silence, his voice so low and quiet it seems to startle Mac, whose eyes go wide. ‘When Dee said you were basically moved out, I assumed it’d be cleaned out, but then I went there and it was fine. What’s with that?’

‘Oh, I, uh,’ Mac starts, rubbing at the back of his neck. His cheeks are flushing. ‘I got kind of a deal going with Joey, you know, on –’

‘On the third floor, yeah.’

‘Yeah, so I promised I’d get him a discount on a personal trainer at Rex’s gym if he’d keep an eye on the place,’ Mac tells him, eyes darting down at the last minute at whatever look is on Dennis’s face. ‘Just cause, you know.’

‘You didn’t want it to go to rack and ruin while I was away,’ Dennis supplies, keeping his voice balanced with a fairly substantial effort.

‘Yeah,’ Mac says quietly, looking up at him. ‘It’s still our apartment, you know?’

Dennis swallows against the lump in his throat.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, it is. Listen, Mac, I –’

‘Dennis,’ Mac starts, and their voices overlap, both of them stepping forward at the same time, so abrupt and synchronised that it’s almost funny. It would be funny, if Mac didn’t have such a miserable look on his face.

‘Dennis,’ he says again, quieter. ‘Look, I’ve been meaning to –’

‘I just wanted to ask you,’ Dennis gets out hurriedly, ‘if you’d have dinner with me on Friday night.’

Mac blinks at him, clearly caught off-guard.

‘You want to have dinner with me,’ he repeats, pointing at himself. ‘Where? At like, Guigino’s?’

‘Yeah.’ Dennis nods enthusiastically. ‘It’ll be like – well, not exactly like old times, but you know. You were just saying how you’re never around anymore, and I feel like I’ve – uh. Missed some stuff, you know. You can tell me about everything that happened while I was gone. You can tell me what happened with the waitress.’

Mac bites his lip. ‘Just dinner?’

‘One more monthly dinner,’ Dennis promises. ‘For old times’ sake.’

It’s a mistake to bring that up, Dennis realises as soon as it’s out of his mouth – Mac’s shoulders hunch a little, like he’s remembering all the other monthly dinners they had and where they never led, no matter how much he might have wanted them to.

‘I don’t know,’ he stalls, rubbing the back of his neck.

‘C’mon,’ Dennis cajoles, making his eyes as big as possible. He’s not afraid to play dirty with this; all he has to do is get Mac to say yes, and then he can figure everything else out later. This is the opportunity he’s been waiting for, he can feel it. ‘Please?’

Mac finally meets his gaze and sighs, long and loud.

‘Okay, fine,’ he says, his mouth twitching unwillingly at Dennis’s excitement. ‘For old times’ sake. But that’s it, okay? Just dinner.’

‘Right,’ Dennis agrees, crossing his fingers behind his back.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note this is where the explicit rating comes in!! i made myself late for work posting this!! hope you enjoy!!

By Friday, Dennis isn’t so excited. By Friday, Dennis could most charitably be described as a bag of nerves, and least charitably as a complete fucking nightmare.

‘It’s gonna be fine, dude,’ Charlie tells him for the fifth time, sounding just as bored and irritated as he had the first. ‘You’ve had dinner together literally a million times. This is not gonna be any different.’

‘Yes, it is, Charlie,’ Dennis hisses, scowling at his reflection and stripping off the light blue shirt with the dark blue stripes, picking up the navy blue again. Charlie’s sigh echoes around the walls of the bathroom, making Dennis wince and momentarily wish he hadn’t put Charlie on speaker. But he can’t panic-dress _and_ bully Charlie into motivating him at the same time with the phone clamped to his ear, so speakerphone it is. ‘Because my intentions are completely different now, remember?’

‘Potato, pot-ah-to,’ Charlie mumbles, then yells: ‘Hey, Dee! We got any chips?’

‘No,’ Dee shouts back, making Dennis wince. ‘You ate the chips, Charlie. Just like you drank my beer and used up all my vitamins –’

‘Stop arguing,’ Dennis intercedes, loud enough that Charlie makes a whining noise of complaint. ‘This phone call is about me, not your domestic dispute. Now, what are your thoughts on make-up?’

‘No thoughts,’ Charlie says promptly. ‘Why are you asking me this, dude? Do you remember who you’re talking to? I’ve never had any thoughts about that. Not in my whole entire life.’

‘You’re right,’ Dennis mutters, frantically spraying cologne over himself in an attempt to get rid of the persistent smell of smoke. He was chaining it out on the fire escape until twenty minutes ago, when he looked at his phone and nearly coughed up a lung at the time. ‘Why the fuck am I asking you? I’m losing my mind, Charlie, I swear to God –’

‘Deep breaths, man,’ Charlie tells him, sounding as if he’s paying maybe one iota more attention to Dennis’s minor breakdown. ‘I don’t know why you’re getting all bent out of shape here. If Mac’s still as into you as you think he is, it’s not gonna matter what shirt you wear or what make-ups, right?’

‘Make-up,’ Dennis corrects automatically. ‘It’s make- _up_ , singular.’

‘Whatever,’ Charlie snaps. ‘Do you want reassurance or not?’

‘Yes, yes, I do,’ Dennis says hastily, pulling the navy blue shirt off and running his hands through his hair, staring at the mirror in despair. ‘Keep it coming, keep it coming.’

Mac had always liked it when Dennis wore make up. He’d never said anything to that effect but he didn’t have to; with the way his eyes skittered to Dennis’s face and away again whenever Dennis turned up to work a little more made up than usual, he might as well have been wearing a neon sign. Dennis had craved that wide-eyed attention some days, stomach aching until the moment Mac’s gaze dropped to the carefully crafted line of Dennis’s rose pink lip and stuck there, lost. Until Dennis smirked or said his name, the knot inside him soothed by the way Mac’s cheeks flushed. And then Mac would startle, caught out, and bustle away as if he could take it back if he worked hard enough, carried enough barrels, shoved enough customers apart for rowdy behaviour. It ran like clockwork, a soothing ritual that reminded Dennis of his place in the world. It certainly wasn’t something he interrogated himself about, back then – if he wanted a little admiration for all the care he put into his appearance, then what was the harm in that?

This is the harm, he thinks, staring at himself in the mirror, his cheeks flushed under the foundation and his eyes wide and glittering with alarm. This is it, now.

He tries to take deep, even breaths, because even he can’t make a panic attack look good, but then he accidentally looks at his watch and his heart rate zooms up into the stratosphere again. Jesus Christ. Is this what people usually feel like before they go on a date? This sick feeling spreading through him, making the nerves flare across the backs of his thighs, his mouth filling with too much saliva? That can’t be right. Why would anyone sign up for this?

‘Still with me, buddy?’ Charlie asks, sounding moderately happier now he’s munching on something he’s no doubt stolen from Dee’s cupboards.

‘I don’t know what to wear,’ Dennis replies sullenly, turning his head from side to side and cursing when he spots a burst blood vessel in his left eye. ‘Fuck. Fuck. This is already a disaster and I haven’t even left the apartment yet, I don’t know why I –’

‘Yeah, you do,’ Charlie sighs. ‘Now shut up. Navy blue shirt.’

Dennis stops fretting at himself for a moment and stares down at the phone.

‘Navy blue?’ he asks in a small voice.

‘Navy blue,’ Charlie confirms. ‘With the good pants, you know the ones. Now are we done? All your organs still in your body and everything? Hair still attached to your head? Yes? Then you’re good to go, buddy.’

‘Your standards are worryingly low, and I don’t know why I’m listening to you,’ Dennis tells him as she shrugs back into the navy blue shirt and rolls the sleeves up to his elbows. He surveys himself in the mirror and breathes out long and deep. Charlie is right about this, at least. The light blue makes him look paler, a little more ethereal, but the darker blue really does make his eyes pop, even if it makes him look more his age. Usually he’d reject it on that basis alone but he wants, in a way he can’t quite quantify, to look more than just vulnerable tonight – he wants to look _real_ , solid, in a way he knows he hasn’t always been before. He wants to look good enough, even if he can’t honestly be good.

‘I’m going to remind you of this conversation in a year, and you are going to thank me,’ Charlie says, in what he clearly thinks is a tone of great magnanimity.

‘You aren’t going to remember this conversation in a year,’ Dennis mutters. ‘You aren’t going to remember it in a week, Charlie.’

‘Besmirchment!’ Charlie protests through a mouthful of something that sounds messy. Dennis grimaces. ‘You’re besmirching my memory skills, dude, and I won’t have it –’

‘Whatever, man, I gotta go, Mac’s gonna be here in like – less than five minutes, shit. Fuck.’

‘Break a leg!’ Charlie tells him cheerfully. ‘Or, you know, don’t. Never really got that, you know? Why would you _want_ to break your leg?’

Dennis rolls his eyes as he hangs up the phone.

He’s still smoothing his hair down when he hears it, sudden and somehow shocking, the sound of Mac’s footsteps outside the apartment. It’s so jarringly familiar that he freezes where he stands, his whole body bracing for the click of the latch as Mac turns his key, the floorboards creaking out a familiar pattern as he steps inside, the cheerful sound of his voice calling out hello. He sees his own face in the mirror go taut with surprise and then something embarrassingly like longing before he looks away.

Mac doesn’t open the door. He knocks twice, a quick _rap-rap_ , like he doesn’t live here anymore. Dennis wonders as he crosses to the door if Mac feels it too, just as sharply as Dennis does – the wrongness of it, knocking on the door of his own home as if he’s a stranger.

Mac looks so good all the time these days that Dennis is in the habit of mentally bracing for it – the muscles and the tan and the salt and pepper stubble, Jesus fucking wept – but it turns out he still isn’t prepared for it when he opens the door. It’s the hesitance on Mac’s face that throws him off balance rather than the outfit, although God knows that would be bad enough. He’s wearing clothes that actually fit, for one thing – black pants and a crisp, well-ironed maroon shirt which somehow perfectly complements the shade of his hair. He’s got it rolled up to the elbows, top few buttons undone to expose the ridge of his collarbone. His hair’s slicked back but not too much, a little ruffled like he’s just run a nervous hand through it. His mouth is flushed dark pink when he smiles at Dennis, like he’s been biting his bottom lip.

Dennis doesn’t say anything for slightly too long, having a little trouble forming words, and then when he does speak it’s with an edge of agitated disbelief that makes him inwardly wince.

‘Mac,’ he says, stupidly. Mac looks a little startled at the volume. It helps _not_ to verbally attack your date if you can avoid it, Dennis reminds himself, wishing the ground would open up beneath him. The desire for a stiff drink hits him right between the eyes and he ruthlessly shoves it down.

‘Uh, sorry,’ he gets out, stepping aside so Mac can come through. ‘Come in, come – you don’t need to knock, bro, it’s your apartment too.’

‘I guess,’ Mac laughs uneasily, hand going up automatically to run through his hair before he visibly stops himself, remembering it’s slicked back. He clenches his hand into a fist at his side as he surveys the room, eyes sweeping over the couch, the bike propped against the wall. A wistful smile flickers over his mouth.

Dennis takes in a careful, measured breath.

‘It is,’ he says, closing his eyes at how strained his voice sounds. He gives a short laugh to cover it, plastering a smile on his face as Mac turns to look at him, a curious look on his face. God, that colour suits him. Dennis never would have picked out maroon with his colouring but it works, it really fucking does. And he knows Mac would never have thought that for himself either, so it must have been Rex’s doing, which is so galling Dennis’s throat briefly closes up. Where the hell does Rex get off trying to change Mac, put him in fancy clothes that fit and don’t even show off his tats, when Mac would have fought like a wildcat if Dennis had ever tried to take his sleeveless shirts away? Who the fuck does Rex think he is?

‘Are you okay, dude?’ Mac asks, frowning slightly. ‘You look kinda –’

‘I’m fine,’ Dennis interrupts brightly. ‘Shall we head out?’

\---

They take an Uber because Dennis still hasn’t replaced the Range Rover, although as he’s pointed out to the gang many times now, at varying volumes, it shouldn’t be him who has to replace it at all considering he isn’t the one who _blew it up with a rocket launcher._

‘The rocket launcher I gave you,’ Mac says proudly as they enter Guigino’s, as if he hasn’t reminded Dennis of this every time it’s come up in conversation since Dennis came back.

‘I don’t know why you keep saying that as if it proves your innocence,’ Dennis complains. ‘You’re literally the one who told me you blew it up.’

‘I’m not saying I’m innocent,’ Mac tells him cheerfully as they sit down, talking over the waiter who’s trying to list the specials. ‘I’m saying it was well-deserved, Dennis.’

Dennis frowns at this, then glares at the waiter.

‘What are you waiting for? Go away,’ he says irritably, and the waiter throws up his hands and stalks off, muttering something about a blacklist that Dennis chooses not to hear. ‘It was disproportionate retribution, Mac, and you know it.’

‘Whatever, dude,’ Mac rolls his eyes, looking down at the menu. ‘Did you see how that waiter looked at us? I’m telling you, man, the service here still sucks.’

‘Yeah?’ Dennis asks absently, looking around. This place is kind of like a time capsule; he doesn’t think a single candlestick has moved since he was last here, over six months ago. ‘Wouldn’t expect anything less. You come here often?’

Mac nods, his smile going a little strained. Dennis is abruptly certain he doesn’t want to hear the elongated version of that answer, but Mac gives it to him anyway.

‘I come here with Rex sometimes,’ he says, then flushes and looks back down at the menu studiously.

‘Of course,’ Dennis says in a voice with all the colour scrubbed out of it. He stares down at his own menu so Mac won’t see the way he’s blinking. Stupid to get upset about it. The gang used to come to Guigino’s as well. It wasn’t just their place. It’s fine.

‘You wanna get a bottle of wine?’ Mac blurts out in a rush after a few minutes of them both keeping their eyes down and reading over every item on the menu, even though they’ve both been here a million fucking times.

‘Oh God, yes,’ Dennis breathes out, and Mac gives a snorting laugh.

‘Fuck sobriety, right?’ he says, one eyebrow arched. Dennis nods and tries to smile, ignoring a bolt of nausea. Karen would tell him this is exactly the kind of situation he’s been trying to avoid – a lot of social pressure, booze everywhere, succumbing to the urge to just let it smooth everything over – but on the other hand, Karen isn’t here, and Dennis is a grown man who can make his own decisions. No matter how irresponsible they might be.

‘Yeah, fuck sobriety,’ he echoes hollowly.

Mac flags over the waiter and they give their order. Dennis doesn’t really register what food he asks for; it doesn’t really matter, considering he’s way too nervous to eat much anyway. He wonders with a pang if Mac will nag him about it, then shoves the thought down until he can’t hear the longing in it anymore.

‘I was kind of surprised you wanted to do this, man,’ Mac says after the waiter’s gone.

Dennis blinks at him but Mac doesn’t look up, fiddling with his napkin.

‘Why?’ he asks cautiously. He hadn’t planned to be interrogated about his motives; Mac never used to poke Dennis’s displays of friendship or affection for weak spots. Probably because he thought they’d collapse at the slightest sign of pressure.

Mac gives a strained half-laugh.

‘Because you were all –’ he makes an exasperated gesture with his hand, raising his eyebrows at Dennis. ‘Before you left. You said you couldn’t do it anymore, you had to leave.’

He recites the words like he has them committed to memory. Dennis shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

‘Yeah,’ he starts, licking his lips. ‘Look, about that. I know we left things kind of weird, but –’

‘Left things kind of weird?’ Mac asks incredulously.

‘Yeah,’ Dennis frowns. ‘Don’t interrupt, I’m trying to –’

‘You told me you hated me,’ Mac points out, his voice a little harder now. ‘You told me you hated me, and that you’d never want to raise a kid with me, and then you left the state.’

‘Well,’ Dennis starts, and then has no idea how to continue. ‘I mean, I didn’t –’

The waiter arrives with their bottle of red and Dennis falls upon it, taking a huge gulp nearly as soon as it hits the glass. The bittersweetness rolls over his tongue, soothing the pounding of his heart. He closes his eyes for a second. Always so difficult to remember, as soon as he lapses, why he ever gave this up.

When he opens his eyes again Mac is waving the waiter away, looking at Dennis with a tiny frown.

‘Look, don’t give yourself a stroke,’ he tells Dennis shortly. ‘I’m just saying you were a dick, dude. We got over it. I just didn’t think you’d – didn’t think you’d want to be around me, that’s all.’

Dennis shifts in his seat, trying to find a way to respond to that that won’t involve throwing himself across the table in one way or another. Mac is still watching him warily, clearly waiting for some dig that’ll prove him right, that this is all some big joke. God, when did he get this fearless? This willing to get hurt, just to dig the truth out of Dennis?  Although maybe that’s not the right question. Mac always was the braver one, after all; always waiting for Dennis to catch up.

‘Well, I do,’ Dennis says in the end, deciding to just style it out. ‘So stop interrogating me and just enjoy it, okay?’

Of all things, that’s what makes Mac smile. He lifts his wine glass to his mouth but he can’t hide it, the way his eyes crinkle up at the edges. A warmth blooms in Dennis’s chest, better than alcohol.

‘You’re such an asshole,’ Mac mutters, but it’s affectionate, at least. The smile lingers around his mouth until their appetisers arrive.

‘So, you, uh. You joined Rex’s gym, huh? How’s that going?’ Dennis asks, poking at his salad.

‘It’s fine,’ Mac says, raising one eyebrow as he cuts into his potato skins. ‘Like you care.’

‘I do care,’ Dennis lies, stung. It’s his business whether or not he’s interested. Mac should just answer the damn question when he’s asked, like a normal person.

Mac rolls his eyes.

‘Yeah, right.’

‘I do,’ Dennis insists.

‘Alright. Look, you don’t have to –’ Mac starts and then cuts himself off, hand clenching and releasing on the table. He takes a long drink while Dennis waits, eyebrow raised.

‘I don’t have to what?’ he asks impatiently.

‘You don’t have to try so hard,’ Mac tells him, avoiding his eyes. Dennis feels his spine stiffen against the back of the chair. Mac’s eyes flicker to him and he sighs. ‘I just mean – this is all really nice and everything, but you’re acting so weird, dude. Ever since you got back. It’s like you think you’ve got to impress me or something.’

‘I don’t think that,’ Dennis says automatically.

‘Okay,’ Mac says, raising one eyebrow at him. ‘But just, you know – if you were feeling like you had to, then you don’t. It’s fine, Dennis.’

Dennis swallows hard, wishing the wine would just appear directly in his mouth so he doesn’t have to reach for it, and then Mac won’t see that his hands are shaking.

‘I was just trying to make things seem normal, I guess,’ he says slowly, feeling his way along the words. Mac is watching him, something in his expression Dennis can’t read. ‘Trying to remember how things used to be.’

Mac gives a short laugh at that. Something twists sharply in the pit of Dennis’s stomach.

‘Things aren’t how they used to be, though,’ Mac tells him, as if he needs the reminder. As if the difference isn’t skewering him through the windpipe every time Mac mentions Rex.

‘I know that,’ Dennis replies, distantly aware of the petulance in his voice but completely unable to stop it. ‘I know that, I do. I just –’

‘They don’t have to be,’ Mac interrupts, his eyes hovering intently on his own wine glass. ‘They could be – better.’

‘Better,’ Dennis says dubiously, and Mac looks up at him.

‘Yeah,’ he says, smiling. ‘Better.’

‘I didn’t think we knew about better,’ Dennis says, and is disgustingly gratified when Mac laughs.

‘Well, I mean,’ he says, ‘not like we’re different people or anything, just –’

‘No, I get it,’ Dennis tells him. He leans forward on his elbows and Mac’s eyebrows raise a little, something focusing in his expression, which jars Dennis into realising what an unfamiliar posture that is. He was always the one leaning back, before – sitting back in his seat, letting Mac be the one to lean in. ‘I get it, man, I’m on board.’

‘Good,’ Mac says. His eyes have gone a little wide, running over the line of Dennis’s shoulders and arms, and Dennis can’t help chasing the heat there, watching him with a slight smile. Mac’s gaze drops to his mouth and lingers, going hazy and soft. Dennis lets himself glory in it, the unrestrained searchlight of Mac’s attention.

The waiter arrives to take their dishes away and Mac diverts his gaze, clearing his throat.

‘So,’ Dennis starts, casting around for a topic of conversation that won’t remind Mac to be pissed off with him again. ‘Oh, you were gonna tell me what happened with the waitress, dude. I want to know everything.’

‘Oh, that,’ Mac rolls his eyes. ‘That was weird. Really out of left field, you know?’

‘Mac,’ Dennis warns. ‘Do not tease me. I am tired of being teased.’

Mac chokes a little on his wine before he clears his throat.

‘Right,’ he mutters, avoiding Dennis’s eye. ‘Yeah, okay. So, uh. So the waitress and Charlie slept together, okay? Like right before you left. And then –’

‘Wait, wait,’ Dennis interrupts. ‘They did not. What the fuck? He finally banged her?’

‘Yeah!’ Mac says enthusiastically, leaning forward now with his elbows propped up on the table, eyes animated and wide. ‘Except then things got all weird ‘cause she kept coming round to the bar looking for Charlie and he kept pretending like he wasn’t around? And he got us to lie for him, dude, it was crazy. Total role reversal. I think that’s how he found the yard, actually, the one him and Dee turned into like an allotment? ‘Cause he was running away from the waitress at the time.’

‘Charlie running _away_ from the waitress,’ Dennis muses. ‘I really never thought I’d see the day.’

‘Right? But then it turned out she was pregnant, so –’

‘What? Oh my _God_.’

‘I know! And that was why she kept showing up to look for him, like she wanted to tell him and all –’

‘Right, right. So what happened next?’

‘Well, that’s when it gets really complicated,’ Mac sighs, pulling back from the table as the waiter lays out their main meals, setting down Dennis’s steak knife with a sideways look of trepidation that Dennis ignores. ‘See, turns out the waitress was manipulating Charlie into sleeping with her so she could have a baby, but she didn’t really want to be with him, you know? She just wanted to tell him she was leaving to go and have the baby someplace else.’

‘She left Philly?’ Dennis asks, sawing at his steak, and Mac nearly knocks over his wine glass and the salt and pepper shakers with the enthusiasm of his returning hand gestures. He has barbecue sauce on his chin from his burger and he’s talking with his mouth full. It’s objectively gross, but also weirdly comforting in its familiarity.

‘Yeah! We just came into the bar one day and found this note that was slipped under the door, and it was like – I don’t know, man, it was all whiny ‘I’ve been trying to reach you’, blah blah –’

‘Boring as shit,’ Dennis nods.

‘Right, right. But then it said she’d left to go and raise the baby somewhere none of us could get to it, like we’re goddamn criminals or something. How crazy is that, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Dennis says, frowning. ‘Crazy. Ha.’

‘Anyway, no one’s heard from her since then, and that was months ago, dude. She must be huge by now.’

‘She take anyone with her?’

‘Don’t think so,’ Mac wrinkles his nose. ‘Although come to think of it, I haven’t seen Artemis around since then either.’ He shrugs. ‘Probably just a coincidence.’

‘How did Charlie take it?’ Dennis asks, placing his knife and fork parallel to each other on his empty plate. He stares at it for a moment, thrown by the realisation that he just ate two courses without batting an eyelid, when he’s not been able to stomach much more than a sandwich in months. He swallows hard, the revelation threatening to bring everything right back up.

‘Oh, he was already banging Dee by then, so he was cool with it,’ Mac says airily. Dennis focuses himself on Mac’s voice, waiting for the nausea to ebb. Mac wipes his mouth with his napkin, finally getting rid of the barbecue sauce. ‘And anyway, I think maybe the waitress wasn’t all she was cracked up to be in the end.’

‘I guess sometimes it just works out like that,’ Dennis says absently. He catches Mac’s eye and they both look away at the same time, clearing their throats. ‘I mean, she was always kind of gross, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Mac agrees, then hesitates. ‘Although. It was kind of like what you did, right?’

‘What?’ Dennis asks blankly.

‘She left to go and have a kid somewhere else,’ Mac points out. ‘Just like you.’

‘It’s different,’ Dennis mutters.

Mac frowns. ‘How?’

‘Because I didn’t get myself pregnant by Charlie, that’s how,’ Dennis snaps. ‘That poor kid isn’t going to have two brain cells to rub together.’

Mac gives a half-hearted laugh.

‘Right, yeah,’ he says.

They sit there in silence for a long moment. Mac’s eyes flicker to Dennis and away again, repeating, getting stuck on the details that always used to make him melt. Dennis imagines if he closed his eyes and listened hard enough, tuned out the clatter and noise of the restaurant around them, he might be able to hear how Mac’s breathing speeds up when he looks at Dennis’s mouth.

Dennis swallows against the dryness of the wine, conscious of Mac’s gaze on the bob of his throat. His fingers itch with the desire to smooth a non-existent flyaway hair back into place.

‘Do you remember,’ he starts out of nowhere, just for something to say, ‘that time Charlie got us to drive him all the way out of town to find that fruit vendor with the strawberries, because he thought the waitress was obsessed with them or something?’

‘And then after we went all the way there and back, it turned out she was allergic,’ Mac groans, burying his face in his hands. His shoulders rise and fall as he sighs, and then he lifts his head and looks at Dennis, gaze deep and sober despite the wine. ‘I never thought we’d see the end of it, man. Never thought he’d really get over her.’

Dennis hesitates, the words hooking into his chest. He licks his lips, hoping they aren’t too wine-stained.

‘Maybe he hasn’t,’ he says.

Mac frowns.

‘He’s dating your sister, dude,’ he points out. ‘I know Dee’s kind of a bitch and everything, but shouldn’t you be hoping they’re happy together?’

‘I don’t care about that,’ Dennis snaps, and then reminds himself to smooth over the sharp edges made even sharper by the booze and the waiter hovering nearby and the fucking forced _ambiance_ of this entire situation. He concentrates on Mac’s quizzical face, takes a deep breath. He can do this. He _can._ ‘I mean, I do, I just. I meant it’s not always that simple, to get over someone. You can’t just flip a switch and miraculously not care anymore.’

‘I guess,’ Mac says, after a long pause. He’s watching Dennis with a slightly furrowed brow – the expression he used to get when he was trying to reach what Dennis was saying from very far away. ‘But I think Charlie was ready, man. I really do.’

‘Well, what if she wasn’t?’ Dennis asks before he can stop himself, and then wants to shove the words back inside his mouth at the way Mac’s face tightens, understanding hitting him like a fucking Taser. Too much, too much, too fast. ‘The waitress, I mean. She must have been used to the attention, after so long, it must be hard to give that up, especially if you –’

‘She left the state,’ Mac interrupts, voice a little too loud. Against all odds, Dennis’s stupid heart picks up at the way his face has darkened, the pissed off set of his mouth. He hasn’t seen Mac genuinely angry since he came back, and he was starting to wonder if that beautiful rage was even still in there, or if Rex had fucked it out of Mac like the drinking and the yelling and the yearning, the need that bound him and Dennis together like a wrought-iron chain.

But no, Dennis thinks with a victorious twist of pleasure in his stomach: there it is. Mac’s glaring at him now as if Dennis is the stupid one, asking for something he doesn’t understand, and Dennis’s throat is clogged with _I do, I do, I do._  

‘Maybe she regrets it now,’ he replies, enunciating every word carefully. ‘Maybe she wishes she could take it back.’

‘Well, maybe it’s too late for that,’ Mac retorts, and Dennis’s breath catches. ‘Maybe she should’ve – maybe she should’ve appreciated what she had before now.’

Dennis swallows. Mac’s breathing hard, eyes glittering, every other person in the room forgotten.

‘What if she’s sorry?’ Dennis asks in a small voice. ‘What if she – what if she really didn’t know, and she didn’t – she wishes she could take it back but she can’t, because it’s been too long and everything’s changed but that doesn’t mean _she’s_ changed –’

‘But,’ Mac interrupts, brow still furrowed. The look in his eyes is so confused and wary and hopeful that it gives Dennis goose bumps. ‘She never wanted him. Not once. She never said anything, she never –’

‘She did,’ Dennis blurts out. ‘Mac, I promise you. She did. She did. She does.’

Mac stares at him, then takes a very large gulp of wine.

‘Mac,’ Dennis says again softly, and watches it land, spreading slow and graceful devastation as Mac shudders, gripping the table like he needs it for balance. ‘Mac, please.’

\---

They take an Uber back to the apartment, although Dennis doesn’t remember a thing about the ride itself; couldn’t pick the driver out of a line-up with a gun to his head. They could have flown back home on a magic carpet for all he cares. The only thing he knows is the heat of Mac’s thigh bleeding into his, the hair rising on Dennis’s arms when their eyes meet.

Mac pauses as he walks through the door of their apartment and Dennis gets stuck on the image for a long second, Mac caught in rare profile: head turned to the left, listening to check Dennis is following him. His eyelashes are just visible like that, the slight part of his lips.

Dennis swallows and looks away, trying to regain some measure of control over himself. Why is this hitting him so hard? It’s only Mac. Same back and shoulders Dennis has been looking at since they were kids. But then Mac turns around and looks at him, his eyes wide and a little freaked out but still here, still brave enough to stay, and maybe Dennis does know, after all.

‘Place looks good, right?’ Mac says. His voice is thready, rambling, his hands shoved deep into his pockets now like he can’t trust himself to keep them at his sides. ‘I haven’t been here much since – uh. I guess you know that. Anyway, it looks –’

‘Yeah,’ Dennis says, not listening, white noise fizzing in his ears, and then he grabs Mac by the shoulders, yanks him forward, and kisses him.

It’s too hard at first, Mac frozen with surprise as their teeth clack together, the pressure making it impossible to move. Dennis starts to ease back, cursing his own lack of technique, but then Mac’s mouth drops open a little as he breathes out against Dennis’s mouth, this tiny sound of disbelief coming out of him, and Dennis surges forwards again, can’t help himself. Mac’s lips are so soft, softer than he’d thought, softer even than they looked. His hand comes up to wrap around Dennis’s wrist, holding him in place, and Dennis’s breath hitches at the force of it, firm but not painful. His mouth falls open and he runs his tongue along Mac’s lower lip, marvelling at the wet warmth there, the most fragile place Dennis has ever touched him. Mac nearly chokes on air, fingers tightening, and Dennis feels a bright swell of joy: he did that to Mac, just the tip of his tongue did that. Just that single point of pressure.

Mac jerks into motion then, releasing Dennis’s wrist so he can cup his face in both hands. Dennis dimly registers the sound he makes but he can’t take responsibility for it – it’s too desperate, drawn up from the knot of need in his stomach.

‘Dennis,’ Mac breathes against his mouth, like a question. Dennis can’t see him because he’s got his eyes closed and he can’t open them, he just can’t, but he grips Mac’s shoulders tighter, kisses him harder. He doesn’t want this to be a question.

And Mac – God, beautiful, unhesitating Mac – knows, somehow: he manoeuvres them around and presses Dennis back against the door, leaning in until their combined weight makes it creak in the frame. Dennis’s whole body opens up to him, legs parting for Mac to stand in between as his arms wind around Mac’s shoulders and he pulls him back in to kiss on a hitching breath that makes Mac shudder. Mac’s hands cradle Dennis’s face as if they’re touching something precious but he kisses him dirty, mouth hot and open and wide, and he tastes like wine and he’s _good_ at this, he’s – Dennis hadn’t known, he couldn’t have known that Mac would be good at this but he should have. He wanted him to be. Of course Mac would know how to make this less scary.

‘What do you want?’ he breathes against Mac’s mouth, swallowing hard when Mac presses him harder into the door, friction dragging just right against his erection. Mac’s cock is poking him obnoxiously hard in the stomach and Dennis loses some time thinking about the hot silky weight of it in his hand, the way Mac would bite his lip while Dennis stroked him, thrusting into his grip, eyelashes fluttering as he moans –

‘What do _I_ want?’ Mac asks, pulling back breathlessly and grabbing one of Dennis’s hands, kissing his way up Dennis’s wrist and burying his face in Dennis’s palm. His breath is hot against the sensitive skin as his tongue flickers out, catching on a nerve and sending a shiver straight to Dennis’s cock.

Dennis stares at him, mind completely blank.

‘Uh,’ he chokes out. ‘I mean, uh. What do you –’

‘What do _you_ want, Den?’ Mac asks, blinking at Dennis. His pupils are huge, blown wide with lust. ‘You’ve not done this before, right? So I mean, we’ll do whatever you –’

‘What? No,’ Dennis snaps. ‘This isn’t like a charity fuck, Mac, you don’t get to be the benevolent one here.’

‘Oh, God, Dennis, don’t use big words with me right now,’ Mac pleads, fumbling with the buttons on Dennis’s shirt until it’s open halfway so he can run his mouth across Dennis’s collarbone, tongue tracing the thin blue veins. A lock of hair falls across his forehead as his eyes flutter closed and he sucks a sweet, hurting mark into Dennis’s neck.

‘Oh, fuck,’ Dennis breathes. He bruises like a peach, Mac knows that, which means Mac _wants_ everyone to see – he tightens his fingers in Mac’s hair and Mac groans softly, mouth still open against Dennis’s skin, and then Dennis yanks him in again to kiss, deep and wet and hard. Mac feels so _big_ like this, the weight of him crushing Dennis into the door, strong arms keeping him in place. He can’t get over the shock of it, the heat and pressure, his fingertips scrabbling to keep Mac close. ‘You feel so good, oh my God –’

‘Fuck,’ Mac pants, kissing him messy as his hands stroke over Dennis’s thighs and grip his ass, making him shake, making him curse. Dennis scrambles to pull off his shirt without breaking off the kiss, scraping his nails down the ridge of Mac’s stomach and swallowing the needy sounds Mac makes. He wants every sweating inch of him, every hard muscle covered with soft nerve. He pulls Mac in, closer and closer until Mac is grinding helplessly into the cradle of his hips, and Dennis moans in frustration at the sparking pleasure, not quite enough.

‘Just touch me,’ he pants when they pull back for air. ‘I don’t care what, just –’

‘Okay, okay, I will,’ Mac promises, running a soothing hand over Dennis’s flushed cheeks. His mouth is smeared red and sore-looking as he kisses Dennis quickly, just a brush of lips, and then drops to his knees.

‘Holy shit,’ Dennis says, staring down as Mac fumbles with his belt. His fingertips brush Dennis’s stomach and make him shiver hard, cock jerking as a stray fingernail skates along a nerve. ‘Are you really going to –’

‘You bet your ass I’m going to,’ Mac says in a low voice, looking up at him for a second with that goading grin Dennis knows so well, the one that’s always ready to get carried away with a stupid plan. The one that knows him and still says yes anyway, will always say yes; the one that knows what it means to be one half of a whole.

Dennis’s heart gives a painful, loving lurch and he buries his hands in Mac’s hair, stroking through the soft strands while he stares down at him, mute.

Mac’s smile softens as Dennis watches him and he turns his face into Dennis’s hand, shuddering as he maintains eye contact, hips shifting restlessly. Dennis tugs a little at his hair and he shivers, eyes glazed and dark as he looks up at Dennis, reaching for Dennis’s zipper.

He peels Dennis’s pants down and just stares for a second when he pulls Dennis’s cock out of his boxers. Dennis throws his head back against the door and squeezes his eyes closed hard, praying for self-control. He can feel Mac _breathing_ on him.

‘Jesus Christ, Den,’ Mac says softly, and that’s all the warning Dennis gets before Mac gets his mouth on him: no grace or elegance, just sucks the head into his mouth and groans at the taste, fastening his hands around Dennis’s ass cheeks so he can coax him deeper inside. Dennis makes a whining noise he didn’t know he was capable of and snaps his eyes open, staring down at the top of Mac’s head as he sucks. He looks good down there, happy and relaxed, and this isn’t – it breaks something in Dennis’s brain because he’s thought about going down on Mac _a lot_ , fixated on the hot weight of him in Dennis’s mouth, how grateful he’d sound when Dennis was sucking him, the clenching of his fingers in Dennis’s hair when he came. But he never thought Mac would like this so much, would be so eager to do it the other way round, and now Mac is making contented noises around him like Dennis’s cock is exactly what he needs, his hips hitching forwards in a shuddering rhythm like he’s really getting off on it, and his tongue is so warm and wet and perfect, delicately massaging the underside of Dennis’s cock, and Dennis is abruptly reminded that he hasn’t had sex for nearly a year. He fists one of his hands sharply in Mac’s hair on reflex and Mac inhales sharply, his hips bucking forward hard under the pressure.

‘Oh, shit,’ Dennis breathes, head falling back against the door as he exercises a monumental effort not to just immediately start fucking Mac’s mouth, not helped by Mac’s encouraging grip and the soft sounds he’s making. ‘Oh my God, Mac. What the fuck.’

Mac sucks a little harder as he starts stroking his fingertips between the cheeks of Dennis’s ass and Dennis gasps, tightening his hand in Mac’s hair again. He widens his stance as far as it’ll go with his pants around his ankles, but Mac’s fingers retreat. Dennis makes a frustrated noise.  

‘You want me to?’ Mac pulls off to ask, his voice rough and low, eyes glittering as he looks up at Dennis. He’s holding his hips so still it makes Dennis’s cock ache in sympathy; his shoulders muscles are bunching restlessly as he waits, hands stroking over Dennis’s ass. Dennis flashes forward to a point in time when those shoulders might heave over him, holding him down as Mac fucks him into the mattress, and he nearly swallows his own tongue.

‘Yes,’ he rasps, ‘yes, obviously, Mac, just – _fuck_ –’

Mac efficiently sucks three fingers at once into his mouth before he gets his lips back around Dennis’s cock and strokes back between Dennis’s cheeks. Dennis screws his eyes shut, leaning back against the door and trying to breathe slowly, trying to make it last. Mac’s so gentle at first it sets Dennis’s nerves buzzing; he bites his lip, shoving himself down against the pad of Mac’s finger impatiently and moaning a little when he pushes inside. Usually he’s rougher with himself than this but there’s something about the angle – or maybe just that it’s Mac’s unbearably gentle fingers – that’s making him squirm and twist against the pressure, making him breathe hard. Mac just keep massaging him gently, apparently immune to Dennis’s whining, before he pulls out and then pushes back in a little harder with two fingers this time. Dennis hisses out a sharp breath, caught by the deep, visceral pleasure of it. He tightens his hand in Mac’s hair and Mac sucks his dick harder on pure reflex, hips jolting forward again.

‘Fuck,’ Dennis pants, trying to hold Mac’s head cautiously in place as he thrusts forward slowly. The sound Mac makes is so obscene that Dennis does it again, immediately, blind with it, as Mac starts fucking him harder, his fingers crooked at a searching angle that sends pleasure shooting through Dennis’s every nerve. He lets out a gulping breath, caught between the dual sensations of Mac’s mouth and his fingers as everything spirals and he’s got no time to control any of it, no time to recover from the onslaught but God, it feels _so good_ –

Mac urges him forward as Dennis fucks into his mouth again, holding his head in place and dragging the head of his cock over Mac’s tongue, and it’s the way Mac moans around him that finally does it, the sounds he’s making, like he’s loving it, like he can’t get enough –

‘Don’t stop, don’t stop, oh,’ Dennis chants, rhythm spiralling out of control. ‘God, you’re so good, fuck, Mac, you’re so good, baby, _oh_ –’

He comes in a blinding rush that nearly takes him out at the knees, gripping Mac’s hair so tight it pulls the strands white at his hair line. Mac swallows steadily around him and massages inside him until Dennis hisses at the oversensitivity and Mac pulls off his softening cock panting, wiping his mouth. He leans his head against Dennis’s hip for a second while Dennis runs his fingers mindlessly over Mac’s cheeks, his swollen mouth.  

‘Come up here, come up,’ Dennis mumbles, tugging until Mac surges up to him and kisses him messy and uncoordinated, the salty taste making Dennis shiver. He closes his eyes hard and fumbles around until he finds one of Mac’s hands and brings it up to his mouth, kissing it almost savagely. He hears Mac take in an uneven, hard breath. ‘Come on,’ he whispers, opening his eyes and ignoring the wetness there, scrabbling until he finds the hard line of Mac’s dick through his pants. Mac almost buckles against him, throwing out his hands to catch himself against the door as he groans, screwing his eyes shut. ‘Come on, baby, you now, I want you to come –’

‘Oh, God,’ Mac gets out, his shoulders bunching with the effort not to just blindly fuck against Dennis’s body. He buries his face in Dennis’s neck until Dennis coaxes him around with featherlight kisses to his hairline, his eyes, trailing down to his mouth, soft brushes of his lips. He pulls Mac’s cock out of his pants while Mac shakes and flushes and tries to stay still and oh, Dennis wants it. He came less than a minute ago and he wants Mac’s cock, flushed red and hard and leaking at the tip. He wants it inside him, he wants it in his mouth, he wants it pretty much any way he can get it. He breathes out low, feeling like he’s been punched in the stomach.

The look on his face must be projecting some of this pretty hard because Mac makes a noise of disbelief, watching him, and reaches down to take himself in hand as Dennis watches, breathing out a shuddery sigh of relief.

‘God,’ Dennis says blankly, joining his hand to Mac’s and kissing him soft again, sucking Mac’s lower lip into his mouth. He smears his mouth across Mac’s jaw, breathing out hard and hot at the jerky movements of Mac’s arm. ‘God, that’s so hot.’

‘Dennis,’ Mac pants desperately, burying his face in Dennis’s neck. Dennis wraps his hand around Mac’s own, smoothing his palm over the slick head as Mac fucks his fist almost punishingly hard.

‘I want you to fuck me next time,’ Dennis tells him, his voice low and soft, and Mac’s head snaps up, his hips juddering. Dennis leans in and kisses him, letting his mouth fall open for Mac’s tongue, and Mac gives a low moan, rhythm speeding up, thrusting into Dennis’s hand, getting everything wet. Dennis pulls back panting, his voice almost unrecognisable. ‘I want it so much, Mac, I keep thinking about it, you inside me, watching my face while you make me come –’

‘ _Dennis,_ ’ Mac gasps out, his hips juddering to a halt, mouth open and gasping as he comes, slick coating their joined hands. ‘Fuck, Dennis, Jesus Christ, I –’

He collapses against Dennis, pushing him into the door. They stand there panting for a long moment trying to scrape body and mind back together until Dennis gives a half-laughing breath, poking at Mac’s heaving shoulders.

‘Sorry,’ Mac mumbles, clutching at Dennis’s arms as they slide down to the floor in a heap. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean –’

‘Shut up,’ Dennis says softly. ‘Don’t say sorry.’

‘Sorry’ implies Mac shouldn’t be crushing him like this, their legs tangled up together as Mac’s upper body slumps over his and keeps Dennis flattened against the door, and Dennis can’t imagine ever wanting Mac to let him go. He’s stroking Mac’s face. He doesn’t remember when he started doing that, but he doesn’t want to stop. Mac’s watching him, his eyes warm and gentle and completely unarmoured, and Dennis doesn’t ever want to stop.

‘I didn’t get to see your O-face,’ Mac says sleepily, settling back a little so his back’s against the door too. He turns his head so they can still look at each other, and Dennis can still touch him. He nuzzles into Dennis’s hand and some small, quiet thread of joy winds through Dennis at the look on his face. Like he’s comfortable here; like he’s right at home. ‘I always wanted to see that. In person, I mean.’

‘Yours is stupid,’ he tells Mac softly, and Mac hisses out an indignant breath, swatting Dennis lightly on the arm. Dennis starts laughing hoarsely, he can’t help it, at Mac’s injured look, then he tilts Mac’s unwilling face up murmuring, ‘sorry, sorry, come back,’ with a grin in his voice until Mac rolls his eyes and lets Dennis kiss him again, kiss him until he’s soft and his arms enfold Dennis, warm and tight.

‘It’s not stupid,’ Mac says eventually, and Dennis lets out another hiccupping laugh.

‘Fine, okay,’ he says, kissing Mac again, unable to stop smiling. ‘It’s gorgeous, okay, Mac? It’s beautiful.’

Mac just watches him for a moment, eyes hazy and warm.

‘That’s pretty gay, Dennis,’ he says quietly, leaning forward and brushing their noses together, kissing him with the lightest butterfly-wing pressure.

‘You’re pretty gay,’ Dennis retorts, completely predictable but Mac laughs anyway.

‘Bet I can out-gay you,’ Mac taunts him, kissing him again, this time harder so that Dennis gasps, his hands seizing on Mac’s shoulders. ‘Bet next time we still don’t get to a bed. Bet I can fuck you ‘til you’re screaming.’

Dennis’s face is flushing vibrantly, brilliantly red and his breath is coming short again. He hisses when Mac bites his neck, not gentle, and shivers up against him, squirming around directionlessly until Mac gives a low, groaning laugh.

‘Fuck, I love the noises you make,’ he breathes out against Dennis’s neck. ‘Like you’re really into it.’

‘I _am_ really into it,’ Dennis complains, digging his nails into Mac’s hairline to hear him gasp. ‘Where have you been?’

‘It’s just nice to hear it, man,’ Mac persists, pulling back to smile at him. ‘Especially ‘cause I didn’t think you were interested. For like, a really long time.’

Dennis can’t help a slightly smug grin.

‘Well, I knew you didn’t really want to be with Rex, so,’ Dennis tells him. He pulls a bit at Mac’s hair when he stays still. ‘What?’  

Mac draws back a little, frowning at him.

‘Wait,’ he says. ‘Wait. What was that about Rex?’

Dennis rolls his eyes, stroking his fingers through Mac’s hair again.

‘Okay, sorry, was I not supposed to bring that up? Seems kind of hypocritical, considering what we just did, but whatever helps you sleep at night.’

‘What do you mean?’ Mac asks, sounding a little more awake now.

‘Well,’ Dennis fumbles. ‘Just that I could see he wasn’t right for you, any idiot could see that –’

Mac’s body is going stiff and tense against him, and Dennis shuts up, rallying abruptly. He’s said something stupid, he’s said something wrong, and now he needs to stop. He needs to dial it back, get them back to that soft and hazy place.

‘I don’t,’ Mac starts, his brow furrowing in hurt confusion. ‘Was this about me and him? Were you just trying to break us up? Is that why you –’

He pulls back a little, gesturing between them.

‘No,’ Dennis says, but he can’t help dodging Mac’s eyes. His chest feels tight. It’s not a lie. It’s just more complicated than that, and he doesn’t want Mac to get upset and misunderstand. ‘I just meant I knew you’d be happier with me, that’s all.’

Mac goes quiet, watching him for a long moment. Dennis used to hate it when Mac looked at him like that, like he was waiting for Dennis to prove him wrong. Like he can’t help hoping for the best of him, no matter how many times he sees the worst.  

‘What did you think?’ Dennis asks, although he knows he should shut up. It’s hard to stop with Mac staring at him like that, demanding an explanation. He gives half a nervous laugh. ‘Did you think I was just overwhelmed with passion on our doorstep, or, like – what did you think was going to happen tonight, Mac?’

‘Not this!’ Mac says hoarsely. ‘I didn’t think, I –’

‘You knew,’ Dennis says with quiet certainty. ‘Just like I knew, and that’s okay, that’s what I –’

Dennis reaches for him but Mac pulls his hand away. It stings harder than a slap.

‘You just wanted to break us up,’ Mac says. He sounds like he’s testing out the truth of it as he’s saying it, and he doesn’t like what he hears. ‘You don’t even want me, you just don’t want Rex to have me, ‘cause then I wouldn’t be your stupid plaything anymore.’

‘That’s not true,’ Dennis starts, but Mac isn’t looking at him now. He’s staring at the floor. His whole body is taut, a structure on the verge of collapse.  ‘You’re jumping to conclusions, Mac, I never said –’

‘No, no, I get it,’ Mac interrupts, his eyes wide and wounded. ‘It makes sense. Just. How could you do that? How could you lie to me like that?’

It brings Dennis up short, as much as he wants to protest, because really? They’ve done everything to each other, hurt each other a million times in a million different ways and yet Mac is still surprised, somehow, to think Dennis is capable of this. It hurts more than he’d expected, to see Mac so shocked. As if there were still a part of Dennis he’d thought innocent, that didn’t deserve to be abandoned.

‘I didn’t mean to,’ Dennis says, his voice smaller now. ‘It wasn’t about hurting you. I just thought –’

‘Don’t, Den,’ Mac cuts across him, voice so furious now that Dennis’s breath catches. ‘Don’t try and manipulate me now, just don’t, okay?’

‘No, Mac, I swear, it wasn’t about that, I just wanted –’ he swallows convulsively, mind racing for a way to phrase it that won’t dig him any deeper. ‘I just wanted you to see,’ he says eventually. ‘I wanted you to see me.’

Mac stares at him in complete incomprehension.

‘What are you even talking about, dude?’ he spits out, pulling back from Dennis in earnest now, taking the tangle of his warm arms away, making Dennis blink rapidly and something hot and angry flare in his chest. Of course Mac doesn’t understand, when he displays everything nervous and tender about him on the outside for anyone to take a look. Why did Dennis think he would know what it means to give someone that, when he does it all the time?

‘I thought you wanted it too,’ Dennis tells him, watching with a rising sense of panic as Mac shoves his shirt back on, hands still clumsy and sluggish from sex. The back of his throat is smarting, the palms of his hands itching with nerves as he scrabbles back from the door and onto his feet. His stomach is fighting itself, nausea wrenching at his insides. ‘I thought this was what you wanted.’

‘It is.’ Mac stops for a second and shakes his head, blinking hard. ‘It was.’

‘It can still be,’ Dennis tries, but Mac is already shaking his head. Dennis watches him helplessly, his hands starting to shake. Mac turns to look at him and his eyes are blurry, messy with tears. Dennis flinches.

‘Why couldn’t you just want it?’ Mac asks him, his voice thick. ‘Why did it have to be a scheme, why did it have to be –’

‘It wasn’t,’ Dennis tells him urgently, the words and the tone and the look on Mac’s face getting all jumbled up in Dennis’s head until all that comes out is a defensive snarl, an attack against the pain he knows is coming as Mac opens the door. ‘I do, I do, Mac, I do want you, don’t leave – _Mac, don’t go_ –’

The door shuts on his shout, Mac’s angry footsteps receding as he walks away, leaving Dennis alone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> obviously, OBVIOUSLY i am going to fix this horrible mess now, but also just want to put a content warning here for this chapter about brief suicidal ideation and mental health issues because dennis isn't in a great place at the start. i'll add it to the tags too. DM me on tumblr if you want more details. please take care of yourselves <3

‘Talk me through it,’ Karen says.

‘Tell me what you’re doing right now,’ Karen says.

‘Dennis?’ Karen asks. ‘Dennis? Are you still there?’

‘I’m here,’ Dennis’s voice says distantly. He must be around here somewhere, right? So it’s not a lie.

‘Good,’ Karen’s voice comes out of the phone. She sounds relieved. She must have been worried about something. ‘That’s good, Dennis. Can you tell me where you are?’

‘At home,’ he guesses slowly, rolling his eyes around the room. Yep, that checks out. He doesn’t really remember how he got – wherever he is. Here. In bed. The apartment in Philadelphia. He’s in bed. It’s daytime. The sheets are pulled up to his chin. He’s fully dressed but his clothes are wrinkled, like he slept in them. ‘In bed.’

‘Okay, that’s good. Can you tell me the last time you took your medication?’

‘Yesterday,’ Dennis says promptly, pulling it out of thin air. It feels right, but then – something sharp pricks him, inside. Yesterday night, something bad. Bad to think about. He shakes his head, but of course Karen can’t hear that.

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘No.’

‘Okay. Can you get to your prescription and check for me, Dennis?’

Dennis sighs. It seems like a major effort to get out of bed and go and check that, to be honest, when the alternative is lying here. He doesn’t understand why Karen is even talking to him right now. Did he call her? Seems unlikely. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone right now. His thoughts are thick and molasses-slow but he knows that much. He doesn’t want to talk.

‘I can’t,’ he says calmly. It’s the kind of calm which has fault lines running through it, not the kind he likes best, the kind where it feels like everything on the inside of his skull has been scraped out, replaced with fuzz. He can feel it, lingering on the edges of his awareness; how quickly everything could slip, how fragile this balance is. He’d like it if Karen would stop talking so he doesn’t have to risk tipping it.

‘Can you try for me, Dennis?’ Karen asks, her voice equally calm.

‘I don’t want to,’ Dennis tells her, voice rising sharp and abrupt. Then the blip fades out into nothing, and he’s blinking at himself. ‘Sorry, I, uh. Don’t know what happened there.’

‘That’s okay, Dennis. You called me because you were upset,’ Karen reminds him after a beat of cautious silence. ‘About something that happened with Mac.’

Mac’s name flares inside him, a brief spike of pain. No. Not thinking about that.

‘I can’t,’ he says, then stops. Can’t what? So many options. So many things he can’t do. ‘I can’t talk about that,’ he finishes eventually. His voice sounds weird; younger.

‘Okay, Dennis,’ Karen says, in a voice so soothing that Dennis is immediately suspicious. She doesn’t make that kind of effort unless she wants something out of him. ‘I’m going to ask you a couple of questions now, is that alright?’

‘Whatever,’ he mutters, still on guard. ‘Take your best shot.’

‘Are you in a position to harm yourself?’

What position would that be, Dennis wonders. The rate he’s going at, he wouldn’t even have to reach for anything sharp to hurt himself, pinch himself purple and blue, make himself sick. All he has to do is open his mouth, apparently.

‘Maybe,’ he allows.

‘Can you remove yourself from that environment and go someplace safe?’

‘That’s not really how my life here works,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘Not a lot of safety to speak of. It’s more a kind of ‘making do with what we have’ situation, you know?’

Karen is quiet for a moment, and Dennis wrings a dim sense of satisfaction from the thought that he’s finally stumped her. But that fades as quickly as it comes, and all he’s left with is her expectant silence on the end of the line. What does she want him to say here, exactly? What would designate Dennis as enough of a risk to himself that it would qualify her taking action, calling up an ambulance and persuading him to check himself into the hospital? Not that that kind of intervention would help Dennis now. Doctors always pick up on the wrong kinds of self-harm, in his experience – they’re so fixated on the bruises, the cutting, the pills. They don’t have any way to test for the slow destruction Dennis is so good at it, the one that takes a lifetime to come to fruition: all the tiny actions you can take to wear down the patience of someone who loves you until they don’t anymore. Until there’s nothing left.

‘I’m not going to hurt myself,’ he says eventually, weary of the silence. ‘I’m just tired, that’s all. Tired. I don’t even know why I called you.’

‘You told me, and I’m sure you’ll pardon my language seeing as I’m quoting you here,’ Karen says a little dryly, ‘that you’d ‘fucked everything up with Mac, beyond all fucking repair.’

Dennis stares at the ceiling for a long moment. He draws in a breath that feels as sharp as an ice-pick.

‘Dennis?’

‘Yeah,’ he mumbles. He finally blinks and then swipes at his cheeks, staring at his fingers. They’re wet. Christ, he needs to get a grip, he needs to pull himself together, but he can’t – every time he thinks about it, the option slips away and there’s only lying here, there’s only quiet. Maybe he called Karen high on a brief burst of that energy, and now she’s stuck with the worn-out version of Dennis, the one who just wants to lie here until night falls, the one that can barely string a sentence together. ‘That happened.’

‘Would you like to talk about it?’

Dennis snorts. ‘I think you’re gonna make me talk about it whether I want to or not.’

‘I’m not going to make you do anything.’

‘That’s what you said that time when you made me talk about Mrs. Klinsky,’ he says, then frowns at himself. Where the fuck did that come from? ‘The fuck. I don’t – no. I don’t want to talk about that. This isn’t like that.’

Karen hesitates.

‘Are you trying to say Mac hurt you, Dennis?’ she asks cautiously.

‘No,’ he says, rubbing at his eyes. ‘I mean it, it really wasn’t like that. Mac’s not like that.’

Saying his name is a mistake. God, the look on his face when he’d left. He’d been crying – not full-on sobbing, but his eyes were wet. Dennis had always hated seeing him like that, even when he couldn’t put words to why. It gave him this feeling like someone was standing really hard on the ends of his toes. It wasn’t right, for Mac to look like that.

Dennis drifts back into the conversation as Karen is asking for more details, and he chokes on a laugh at the caution in her voice. It’s sweet but it’s just so hideously misplaced, he has to laugh.

‘No, look, let’s not – I don’t. Can we talk about something else? What are you doing right now?’

‘I’m having a telephone consultation with you, Dennis.’

‘I meant apart from that,’ he snaps, the vibrant flare of irritation flickering through him like a flame and lighting up the spaces inside that are dark. Same old Karen, still that sarcastic bitch. Not even thousands of miles could change it. ‘Just distract me, tell me what you’re doing. Maybe while I go look for my meds.’

There’s a moment of silence as she processes the bargain, then gives a small sigh.

‘I just ate an egg salad sandwich for lunch,’ she offers. ‘I’m taking my daughters for dinner at Red Lobster tonight. Have you eaten today?’

‘Why are you so obsessed with food?’ Dennis asks, using the momentum of his irritation to push himself upright and swing his legs over the side of the bed, the lead weight of his feet keeping him fixed to the floor for a moment while he works up another brief burst of energy.

‘I eat the required number of meals a day, Dennis,’ Karen tells him patiently. ‘When was the last time you ate?’

‘Dinner last night,’ Dennis says without thinking, and then remembers he’d thrown it up after Mac had left last night, so it probably doesn’t count. Another waste.

He shakes his head and stands up, holding onto the bedside table for balance when a head rush nearly sends him right back down again.

‘Shit.’

‘Are you okay?’

‘No,’ Dennis snaps. ‘But that’s not new. Stop fussing, I’m just going to the bathroom.’

‘Ah. Should we –’

‘To find my prescription,’ he closes his eyes, long-suffering. ‘It’s probably in the cabinet.’

It’s not in the cabinet.

‘Probably in the suitcase.’

It’s not in the suitcase.

‘I don’t know,’ he says, sitting back on the bed with his head in his hands. The amount of energy it took to get back here is a pretty compelling argument for the idea that he shouldn’t get back up again. All he wants to do is lie down and be alone, and not talk. ‘I can’t – I can’t look for them anymore, Karen. I’m tired.’

‘Okay,’ Karen says in her _I can work with this_ voice. Dennis doesn’t even have the strength to object to it; of the two people in this conversation, he’s content to be the one who doesn’t give a fuck how it turns out. ‘Then can I suggest you call your sister, or someone else who can help you look? Charlie, perhaps?’

‘Charlie couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag,’ Dennis says wearily. ‘Look, don’t worry about me, okay? I’ll check in in a couple hours. I’m really okay, I’m just tired, Karen. I wanna go back to sleep.’

‘Hmm,’ she says, sounding unconvinced.

Dennis briefly considers making a joke about how he doesn’t have the energy to do himself anymore harm right now, but decides to bite it back as Karen sighs.

‘I want a text when you wake up,’ she says reluctantly. ‘And I really would be happier if you would call your sister.’

‘Why?’ he asks, already closing his eyes and lying back. ‘What good would she do me right now? You think she’s never made mistakes?’

\---

He sleeps for a little while; he drifts. He stares at the ceiling, watching the sun drag itself around his room. He goes to the kitchen to get water sometime in the afternoon and only gets through part of the return journey before entropy hits him like a mallet and sometime a little later he finds himself lying down on the living room floor, listening to the buzz of the TV playing some trashy reality show. The hum of it reaches him through the floorboards, soothing and stagnant, the ebb and flow of their murmurs, shouts. He doesn’t know what show it is but that doesn’t really matter. The lives of the people on these shows never really change, no matter how much they want to think they might be capable of improvement. They’re always gunning for that second chance, that new relationship or job or house that’s going to make everything different and worth it, but it never does. They should know better.

Dennis spreads his arms out slowly and runs his hands over the floorboards, still shiny and relatively new despite the six months since their replacement. If he ripped them up, what would he find underneath? Nothing but dust, probably. Dust and dead air. Maybe a tiny glimpse into another time: a torn-up fragment of a lime green post-it like the ones Mac used to pin on the fridge, reminding Dennis to eat.

He imagines ripping up the floorboards and finding the two of them down there, perfect replicas. Eyes closed, hands laced over their chests, skin pale and smooth and cold. Peaceful. Kind of like the picture they’d have made if they really had drowned on the cruise ship, as wrinkled and sodden as their skin would have been from so long in the water. Dennis had never mentioned it to the rest of the gang but he’d kind of liked the idea of dying like that. He knew it was a little weird. It was just that the aesthetic of the whole thing was so pleasing – the semi-circle they’d formed, holding hands, Mac giving him the nod and grim half-smile that meant everything was okay, even if it didn’t seem like it. In that moment Dennis had been part of something bigger than himself, the porous yearning mess of his body reaching out through the water and connecting him to the rest of them, links in a perfectly imperfect chain. Who wouldn’t have cherished the idea of dying like that? Who wouldn’t want to be part of something that pure, that powerful? There’s a big difference between enjoying an aesthetic and wanting to die, Dennis knows that, but if he got to choose then that would be how: the complete opposite of dying alone, for better or worse.

There’s a sharp knock at the door. Dennis’s head jerks against the floor in surprise and he winces, scowling.

‘Dennis?’ calls Dee’s voice, a little too loud for comfort even through the wood. ‘Dennis, open up.’

‘Why?’ Dennis asks, barely audible. He clears his throat and tries again with a little more volume. ‘What do you want?’

‘Mac asked me to check on you, said you’re not answering your phone. Come on, open up. You missed your shift this morning.’

Something jars in Dennis’s throat and he coughs, propping himself up on his elbows. His head swims. Mac’s been calling him? His phone is still in the bedroom and he hadn’t checked it after he hung up with Karen. Mac probably just wants to yell at him some more, Dennis tells the nauseating hope stirring up his empty stomach. He probably just wants to make sure Dennis is alive so he can feel secure up there on his goddamn moral high ground, maybe reject Dennis a couple more times for good measure before he rides off into the fucking sunset with Rex.

‘I’m fine,’ he tells Dee, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back, wincing again. Lying down on the floor was, in retrospect, not an excellent move for someone who recently had to find himself a good chiropractor. Mandy is going to laugh her _ass_ off when he tells her about this. ‘Go away.’

‘No,’ she returns promptly, and smacks the door a couple of extra times for good measure. Dennis groans and she makes a triumphant noise. ‘Yeah, exactly. I am not going to go away until I see that you’re alright, you little bitch. If you don’t open the door, I’m just going to sit out here and talk until you do. Your choice.’

Dennis weighs it up. He can probably hold off opening the door for at least a couple of hours, but he’ll fold eventually, and by then Dee’ll be even more pissed and hard to get rid of. Might as well just bite the bullet and get rid of her as quickly as possible, and then go back to being alone.

‘Okay,’ he calls out, not moving. ‘I’m getting up.’

‘Getting up? Were you lying on the floor or something? What –’

Dee’s face, when he opens the door, flashes from concerned to irritated to supremely unimpressed in the space of less than five seconds before it smooths out into a blank. Dennis has wondered before if that’s what he looks like when he gets upset, but he’s got an uncomfortable suspicion that Dee is actually a lot better at controlling her emotions than he is. Or even if she can’t control them, she’s better at not getting them all over everybody. Not that he would ever tell her this.

‘You saw me, I’m fine,’ he tells her flatly, and goes to shut the door again. Dee grabs it and forces it back. Dennis grunts in surprise, glaring at her.

‘Not so fast,’ she says, her eyes narrowing. She holds up his prescription bottle and rattles it, watching him closely. ‘Found these at the bar. You must’ve left them there yesterday.’

‘Oh. Right,’ Dennis says, then tries to count backwards without letting it show on his face. Did he take one at the bar yesterday? He doesn’t remember, but then again, he had other things on his mind. He has a reminder on his phone but by this point it’s rote enough that sometimes he ignores it under the assumption that he’ll remember to take it later. He can’t recall the motions of it – flipping open the cap, pouring onto into his palm, swallowing it down dry. He’d have been in the back room, away from everyone else; he doesn’t need everyone staring for it. The whole process is irritating enough as it is.

Well, it’s too late to worry about it now. He grabs the bottle and tries to paste a smile on his face. Dee’s eyebrows rise sharply, so he’s guessing it looks wrong. He lets it drop.

‘Okay,’ he says, inching the door forward. The Real Housewives of where the fuck ever are really going for it on the TV behind him, screaming and shouting, and he has to raise his voice to make himself heard. ‘You gave them to me, it’s all good now.’

Dee holds the door firmly open, still watching him.

‘Let me see you take one,’ she says calmly. ‘Then I’ll go.’

‘Dee,’ he starts in a warning voice. ‘Don’t do this with me, don’t – I’m not some lunatic who needs your help, okay –’

‘No, you’re a lunatic who needs to take his meds,’ she cuts across him sharply, and against all odds it makes him laugh. Or it makes something like a laugh come out of his throat anyway, hard and biting. He catches her eye, trying to swallow down the scratching bubble of hysteria in his throat. The set of her jaw is firm, final as she watches him steadily. She really isn’t going to leave unless he does this.

He glares at her and takes a pill, gulping it down dry, bitter, his cheeks flushing with irritation and something like shame. Who the fuck does she think she is, lording it over him like this? Like she didn’t get tossed in the loony bin before she’d even finished out a year of college. At least Dennis actually takes his fucking meds.

Most of the time.

‘Good,’ Dee says, some of her frown lines smoothing out. She raises her eyebrows meaningfully. ‘Now, let’s talk about getting you dressed.’

‘What?’ Dennis asks as she catches him by surprise, barging her way inside. ‘What the fuck? You said you’d leave!’

‘I lied, obviously,’ Dee says, looking around the apartment in distaste. ‘God, all this effort and he couldn’t even spring for any better furniture. Never mind, that’s not the point. Clothes. You. Wearing them. Let’s go.’

Dee variously bullies and cajoles him into the shower, handing him a stack of fresh clothes and a towel with the suggestion that he try not to drown himself before she goes off muttering about caffeine. Dennis sneaks back into the bedroom to check his phone after she closes the door and sure enough, he’s got three missed calls from Mac. Three in the last two hours, while he’s been lying on the floor of the living room. Three.

He stares down at his phone for a long time before he goes to shower. What the fuck does it mean? He stands under the spray and lets it scour him, staring blankly at the tiled wall. Three times Mac was worried enough to call, or angry enough, or hurt – three times he was thinking about Dennis, three times Dennis could have answered and said – what? Fucked it up again? If Mac was here right now – if Mac busted through the bathroom door and pulled back the shower curtain and stood in front of him right now, Dennis wants to believe he could lay it all down, that they could get to the bottom of this thing between them. God knows it’s been long enough. But he already tried that yesterday, and all it had taken was one wrong word for Mac to run away. Dennis can handle his own fear, but he can’t handle Mac’s too. He hadn’t thought he’d need to.

When he comes out of the bedroom still rubbing his hair dry Dee’s in the kitchen, frowning into the open fridge.

‘You suck at living alone,’ she announces without turning around. ‘You’ve got like, nothing in here. What have you been eating?’

‘Why are you still here, asking me questions?’ Dennis mutters, sitting down on the couch and letting his head flop back, his eyes close. The first day back on his meds after skipping a dose or two is always a little hard to take, the kaleidoscopic swirling mess inside his skull being sluggishly forced into straight lines.

‘Because somebody has to,’ she tells him. She turns around with a block of cheese in one hand and an egg in the other. ‘Ready for the world’s tiniest omelette? It’s going to be mostly Swiss, I’ll tell you that right now.’

‘Who are you?’ he asks, staring at her in genuine confusion. ‘And what have you done with my sister?’

Dee rolls her eyes and turns around, pulling a pan out of the cupboard with a clatter that makes Dennis wince.

‘The things I do,’ she says, a little too loudly for it to stay under her breath as clearly intended. She raises her voice without looking around at Dennis. ‘Will you just let me alone for one fucking minute, here? Jesus Christ. It’s like you _want_ me to spit in your food.’

‘Don’t spit in it,’ Dennis frowns. ‘But seriously, why are you here? I’m clearly fine now, and if I’m not at work then the bar must be busy, and –’

Dee turns around and faces him, brandishing the goddamn pan still clutched in her grip. She looks ridiculous with her eyes all narrowed and mean like that; it has no right to be that intimidating.

‘Do you want to talk about what happened with Mac yesterday?’ she asks, her voice level and calm.

Dennis stares at her, open-mouthed.

‘Didn’t think so,’ she says. ‘And that’s why I’m here, so.’

‘The entire world does not revolve around Mac,’ Dennis says sourly after a minute of quiet, the only sounds the hissing of butter and cheese in the pan. The wires are getting crossed in his brain and he can’t figure out if the cooking smells are making him hungry or nauseous. Probably a little of both.

Dee shoots him a baleful glance.

‘ _I_ know that,’ she says, curt. ‘Didn’t think you did, though.’

‘Give me a break,’ Dennis pleads, closing his eyes again so he won’t have to watch her staring at him judgmentally. ‘You have no idea what I’ve been through in the last twenty-four hours, _no_ idea, so why don’t you just shut up and –’

‘Here’s how I see it,’ Dee starts, apparently deciding to disregard his explicit instructions. ‘You both fucked up, okay? You shouldn’t have tried to just break them up like that, but Mac shouldn’t have left you alone last night when you were all –’

Dennis opens his eyes again to find Dee waving a hand in his general direction.

‘When I was all what?’ he snaps.

‘Freaked out!’ she says, her eyes bulging a little. ‘He knows how you get, he shouldn’t have left you. We all know better than that.’

‘He wouldn’t have,’ Dennis says blankly, staring past her to the wall. ‘If things were how they used to be.’

Dee slams the pan down on the kitchen table, nearly sending the mess of egg and cheese flying and making Dennis jump.

‘But they aren’t how they used to be,’ she says loudly, fixing him with a glare. ‘You need to get that through your thick head, Dennis, or you really are going to screw everything up. It doesn’t mean you’re alone, okay? Just because things are different now, it doesn’t mean we don’t give a shit. Try and process that, for the love of God. And eat this fucking egg.’

Dennis gets up slowly and goes to the table, sitting down. He keeps his eyes on Dee in case of any more outbursts but she stays turned away, occupied with the coffeepot, muttering a constant stream of abusive nonsense to herself.

‘And I’m the crazy one,’ he mutters, sticking a fork into the congealed mess of egg and cheese. Eating directly out of the pan isn’t ideal but it’s hardly the worst meal he’s ever forced down either. He burns his tongue but it still tastes good anyway, salty and buttery.

Dee doesn’t turn around but she does snort, quietly, and doesn’t say anything else while Dennis eats in silence.

\---

‘I’ll come back over tomorrow,’ Dee tells him as she leaves, shooting him a narrow-eyed look. ‘And I want you to text me when you eat.’

‘Nope,’ Dennis tells her with a sickly-sweet smile. ‘No, I won’t, but thanks anyway!’

‘Jesus Christ, you’re bitchy when you’re pining,’ Dee mutters, slinging her bag over her shoulder. ‘Just promise me you’ll call if you want – I don’t know, I guess emotional support?’

They look at each other, briefly united in a grimace, before Dennis gives her a gentle shove out the door.

‘Whatever,’ he says. ‘Thanks for the egg.’

As much as he’d wanted her gone, after she leaves the apartment feels bigger somehow, emptier. It’s too quiet. Dennis sits on the couch and smokes, staring at his phone until his eyes go blurry, trying to figure out what the fuck to do. When the screen goes dark he wakes it up again, eyes fixed on the three missed calls notification. He lets the buzz of the TV wash over him, picturing himself this time tomorrow, sat in exactly the same position, waiting for a call that never comes.

He’s staring at his phone so intently that the sound of the key in the lock genuinely throws him: he startles, nearly dropping his cigarette. His throat tightens as the door swings open and Mac shuffles inside. He’s dressed sloppily, carrying a bulging gym bag, and he looks tired as a dog.   

Mac looks around for him and when their eyes meet, something tense in the line of his shoulders relaxes, even as the line of his mouth tightens.

‘Hey,’ Dennis says cautiously, and Mac looks away.

‘Hey,’ he says back awkwardly. Dennis swallows around the lump in his throat. He puts out his cigarette and sets his useless phone carefully on the coffee table, placing it at a careful right angle to the edge just for something to do with his hands.

Mac dumps the gym bag on the ground, looking around at the apartment as if Dennis might have had decorators through in the last twenty-four hours. Less than twenty-four hours, actually. They were having their first fuck against that door less than a day ago; Mac was kissing him, and touching him with the closest thing to reverence Dennis has ever felt, and now –

‘What are you doing here?’ Dennis asks, his voice coming out more plaintive than politely inquisitive, like he was aiming for. He winces at the sound of it but Mac doesn’t seem to notice. He’s leaning back against the door, as far away from Dennis as he can possibly get while still remaining in the apartment.

‘I wanted to see if you were okay,’ Mac answers eventually. His eyes flicker to Dennis’s phone on the coffee table and away again. He sighs, running a hand through his messy hair. ‘You weren’t answering my calls and I thought – uh. I don’t know what I thought. I just wanted to check, I guess.’

He leans forward for one long hovering second, as if he might decide to grab his stuff and take off again now he’s confirmed Dennis didn’t throw himself off the fire escape last night. There are bags under his eyes and his t-shirt’s creased and wrinkled, his hair unwashed. He objectively looks like shit, and he _left_ Dennis last night, and Dennis is stressed and pissed off and so goddamn tired that he can barely string a sentence together, but despite all that he still knows with cast-iron certainty that if Mac tries to leave again now, he will throw himself across the room and bar the door to stop him. He’ll nail Mac’s boots to the floor himself. They’ve got shit to talk about.

‘Well,’ Dennis says at length. ‘As you can see, I’m fine.’

‘Oh, yeah, you look great,’ Mac mutters.

‘You hardly look any better,’ Dennis retorts, frowning and folding his arms across his chest. ‘What, Rex throw you out?’

‘I left, actually,’ Mac snaps, shooting him a glare. ‘He didn’t get that far.’

‘Oh,’ Dennis says, momentarily stymied. Something urgent and bright in the back of his mind is flaring up, trying to get his attention, but he ignores it ruthlessly. It doesn’t have to mean anything; it isn’t like Mac _has_ to be with either one of them. This isn’t a game show where no one goes home empty-handed.

‘So I kind of need a place to crash,’ Mac continues, scrubbing a hand over his face. He looks at Dennis, eyes dull and tired. ‘And I figured you couldn’t exactly throw me out.’

‘I wouldn’t do that,’ Dennis objects. Mac cocks an eyebrow at him and Dennis flushes a little, remembering the numerous times in the past he’s done exactly that. ‘Well, I’m not gonna do that now,’ he corrects.

‘Great,’ Mac says sarcastically. ‘Same high standards as always, Den.’

It’s the pet name that really stings, coming straight on the heels of the dig. Dennis bites his lip, fighting not to let it overwhelm him. God, it’s so easy for them to hurt each other. It’s so, so easy. That’s the problem with knowing someone this well – you don’t even have to be inventive when you lash out, because you know exactly where all the weak points are. Everyone always thought Dennis was lying when he said he hated Mac but maybe he wasn’t, exactly, in moments like this. Don’t you have to hate the person who gets to you like that, even just a little bit? Isn’t that how this works?

‘Why don’t you go crawling back to Rex, then, if I’m such a disappointment?’ Dennis snaps, unable to stop the hurt leaking into his voice.

‘I can’t,’ Mac snaps, then swallows and looks away. He’s gone tense against the door, arms folded over his chest and shoulders hunched. ‘We broke up.’

‘Yeah, I got that,’ Dennis retorts automatically, then blanches at the way Mac glares at him.

‘Why do you have to be such a dick about it, dude?’ he demands, pushing off the door and taking a couple of steps in Dennis’s direction. ‘It’s your fault we broke up!’

‘You were right there with me, if I recall,’ Dennis says, his voice thin and high. Every exhausted nerve that’s been hiding away today is being yanked out into the open now, smarting at the look on Mac’s face, as if Dennis is a disappointment he should have seen coming. ‘It takes two to cheat, asshole.’

‘I wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t been there!’ Mac insists, his voice rising. ‘You tricked me into it, like you’re always tricking me into something –’

‘Why did you come out with me in the first place, then?’ Dennis asks belligerently, screwing his hands up into fists, nails scraping against the fabric of the couch. He can feel tears starting to stand out in his eyes and he blinks them back fiercely, not willing to be distracted. ‘If I’m so – if I’m so fucking awful, why did you come to dinner with me? Why did you come back here after? You must have known what was going to happen, you can’t pin this all on me.’

Mac snorts, turning away and back in exasperation. He frowns when Dennis just stares at him mutely.

‘Come on, man,’ he says. ‘You know why.’

‘No, I don’t!’ Dennis cries out, and his voice is piercing in the sudden, absolute quiet. ‘I don’t,’ he says again, softer. ‘You – you left, Mac. I don’t know anything.’

Mac is watching him with a strange expression on his face. Dennis’s heart is beating and beating and beating nearly out of his chest, wild with the need to hear him speak.

‘Because it’s you, obviously,’ Mac says, softer than Dennis expected. He gives this little wistful smile after he says it, and it lodges somewhere in Dennis’s chest. It looks like longing; it looks like every time Mac stared at Dennis for too long and Dennis looked away. ‘It’s always been you, Dennis. I can’t help it. I never could. I thought you knew.’

It sits between them for a minute while Dennis holds his breath, waiting for Mac to take it back, or for one of them to ruin it. But Mac doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even look like he wants to take it back. He just stands there waiting, his hands twisting in front of him as he keeps his wary eyes fixed on Dennis, wanting to know what Dennis has to say to that. Which Dennis kind of does, too.

‘Still?’ Dennis asks eventually, dry and croaky. He swallows hard, can’t help the faint note of pleading that enters his voice. ‘You still felt like that? Even – even when you were with Rex?’

‘Even when I was with Rex,’ Mac swears, his eyes steady on Dennis’s face. He swallows hard suddenly but keeps on, his voice shaking. ‘I tried not to, I tried to stay away, I knew it wasn’t fair to him. But I just – I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t help myself, man, it’s –’

He shrugs helplessly, running a hand through his hair as he watches Dennis, eyes pleading with him to understand.

‘It’s part of me,’ he says simply.

Dennis gives a slow nod, as if he has any hope of assimilating this into his body of knowledge about the world. He feels like he could listen to Mac saying that every day until he died and never get tired of it; he wants those words stamped on his gravestone. He breathes out long and loud, puffing out his cheeks like a child, and it’s maybe the first easy breath he’s taken in over six months.

‘Since when?’ he asks, and Mac gives a half-laugh, sniffing as he gives another shrug.

‘Since – I don’t know, since we were teenagers, man. That’s like asking since when have I been gay. Since always, Dennis.’

‘Okay,’ Dennis says in a small voice. He badly wants Mac to come and sit down with him but he can’t figure out how to get him over here without actually asking. He wants, for perhaps the first time in his life, to be a comfort to someone – to stroke his fingers through Mac’s hair, kiss his eyelids, take some of his pain away. He wants to feel Mac’s hands on him again, touching him so gently, as if he’s something beautiful and fragile that Mac intends to take care of. He remembers the heaviness of Mac’s body weighing him down, anchoring him to the earth. What a relief it would be, to feel that.

Maybe some of that leaks through in how Dennis is looking at him, because after a moment’s hesitation Mac crosses the remaining distance to the couch and sits down next to him, keeping a careful foot of space between them. Dennis shifts his body sideways so he can face Mac fully, greedily eat up Mac’s uncertain expression in profile. He realises he isn’t blinking and does it a couple of times fast to compensate.

‘Are you going to leave again?’ Mac asks eventually, sounding like he’s trying hard to keep his voice balanced. He sniffs and wipes a hand across his face, still not looking at Dennis. The question is such a world away from what Dennis is thinking about at that moment that he has to replay it several times in his head before it makes sense.

‘ _No,’_ he says when he understands, and then again, fast: ‘No, no, I wouldn’t, Mac, I – I don’t think I can.’

‘What do you mean?’ Mac asks, looking at him with his brow furrowed. His eyes are wide and still a little wet. Dennis clenches his fingers in the couch cushions.

‘I mean, I don’t want to,’ he clarifies. He can’t help a small, semi-hysterical laugh. ‘Although it’s not like I’ve got much to show for coming back, right?’

He casts a glance around at the apartment. From this vantage point, he spots the edge of the open suitcase still lying on his bedroom floor, never quite unpacked, the ruffled peaks of shirts and jeans peeking out. He starts laughing again, a little helplessly, but Mac doesn’t laugh with him.

‘Nothing,’ Dennis says. ‘I came all the way back here, and I’ve still got nothing.’

He props his head on his hands, staring down at the floorboards as he waits, barely breathing, for Mac to contradict him. Mac doesn’t say anything for a minute, the line of his body stiff in Dennis’s peripheral vision, until something in the tense shape of his silhouette abruptly gives way: he sighs and leans back against the couch, letting his legs stretch out, making himself comfortable.

‘I don’t know about that,’ he says quietly. ‘Seems kind of self-pitying to me, man.’

Dennis looks up, opening his mouth and closing it again. A ringing sound begins to echo in his ears.

‘I mean,’ Mac continues, ‘leaving Philly might not have worked out for you but you came back, at least. You admitted you fucked up and you came back. That takes more guts than most people would have had, in the circumstances.’

Dennis’s throat works, brow furrowing.

‘You think so?’ His voice is too soft, eager to be consoled. He hates it but he can’t stop the yearning note that reaches out, latching itself around Mac’s exposed wrist.

‘Yeah,’ Mac says, finally looking at him. And he’s still angry, sure, still tired and sad, but there’s something else too, that deep and certain thing that Dennis was afraid he might never see again. ‘Leaving home is brave, dude, but coming back is even braver.’

Dennis swallows a couple of times, licks his lips. Mac doesn’t say anything, just watches him steadily.

‘You still think that, even though you didn’t want me to go?’ he asks, hating himself for asking but needing to hear Mac say it. 

‘Yeah,’ Mac says, giving him a small smile. ‘I think it was a dick move but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t brave, dude. You went about it the wrong way the first time, but I think you’re gonna be a good dad. You know, if you can do it in bite-size pieces.’

Dennis looks away hastily and dips his head back down again. He takes a couple of calming breaths but it’s fucked anyway: his voice comes out hoarse. His hands tighten around his knees, the threads of his jeans stretching.

‘Jesus Christ, Mac. Don’t pull your punches or anything.’

‘Sorry,’ Mac says awkwardly. ‘I can take it back if you want.’

Dennis laughs despite himself.

‘No,’ he says, sniffing. ‘I don’t want you to take it back.’

Mac hesitates and Dennis looks at him, raising his eyebrows.

‘What?’ he asks, pulse picking up, quickly running through the last few minutes to find the thing he said wrong, the thing that’s making Mac’s face look like that. ‘What did I say?’

‘Nothing, it’s just –’ Mac clears his throat. ‘You said you have nothing, but you know that’s not true, right?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ve still got the gang, dude,’ Mac tells him, his gaze softening when Dennis sniffs again. ‘You’ve still got Dee, and Frank, and Charlie.’

Dennis swallows, remembering Charlie coaching him through getting ready last night; Dee barging down his door this morning, making sure he took his meds. He rolls the thought around in his head, trying to get used to it. Not alone, maybe. Not alone, again.

‘And you?’ he asks hesitantly, his heart pounding. ‘Do I still have you, too?’

Mac looks away from him, and whatever combination of spit, pride and sheer bloody-mindedness was holding Dennis together starts to disintegrate.

‘I don’t know, man,’ Mac says, uneasy. He looks at Dennis, eyes dropping to his mouth and back up to his eyes again, and sighs. ‘I mean, look at us. It took like three weeks for things to get all fucked up again. We were both drinking last night, and we fought, and – I don’t know, Dennis. You can still hurt me more than anyone else ever could. And I hurt you, too. Do you really think we’re good for each other?’

Dennis blinks at him. Honestly, whether or not him and Mac are good for each other is not a question that’s ever crossed his mind. It’s not that it doesn’t matter, just that – well, you can’t pick and choose, can you, the person you want to be with? Dennis couldn’t. So it makes no difference, in the end, whether Mac is good for him: he just _is_.

Dennis tries to imagine, for a moment, going back to being just friends. Never seeing Mac on his knees again, never touching his hair or kissing him, feeling Mac’s arms around him. Just hanging out at the bar, keeping a careful distance from each other. Sleeping in separate rooms, maybe even separate apartments. Seeing Mac around town with another new boyfriend, beautiful and glowing and a million miles out of Dennis’s reach.

His chest tightens up so much he can hardly breathe.

‘I don’t know,’ he gets out eventually, after long enough for Mac to have gotten good and nervous; his head snaps around as he watches Dennis answer. ‘I don’t know about that, Mac. But I don’t know if we can go back to just being friends.’

‘I could,’ Mac butts in, flushing when Dennis looks at him sceptically. ‘I could do it, dude. I would. So long as you didn’t leave again.’

‘But I don’t want that,’ Dennis says, words bursting out of him in frustration. ‘I don’t want to let us off the hook here, Mac, I really don’t. Friends issue aside, do you even think anyone else could be good for us, really? Looking at the choices we’ve made, the people we are?’

‘Rex was good for me,’ Mac says quietly, looking off to the side. Dennis swallows down the sick feeling that rises in him at hearing that. Maybe they would have been happy if Dennis had never come back; maybe they might have grown old together. But somehow Dennis doubts it, and even if he didn’t, then he’s not so much of a saint he can’t be glad to be sat here with Mac, the solid heat of his thigh warming Dennis even though they aren’t touching. Despite everything, he can’t be sorry for that, and he can’t pretend to be.

‘I know,’ he says. He raises his hands quickly when Mac frowns at him. ‘I know, I know I’ve got no right to talk about that but – maybe I, uh, well. I’ve got a proposal for you, Mac.’

Mac turns to look at him more fully, shifting his whole body around on the couch.

‘Go on,’ he says, wary.

‘Maybe we’re not good for each other,’ Dennis starts slowly. ‘Although I don’t really believe that – but even if you do, then okay, well, whatever. Even if we aren’t, Mac, I think maybe we deserve each other. And isn’t that worth something, even if it’s not all rainbows and puppies and whatever? Isn’t that more important? That we’re –’ he pauses and licks his lips, his heart hammering and his palms sweating, hideously aware of the blotchy state of his face and his messed-up hair as Mac stares at him. ‘That we’re right for each other? That I want you and you want me, even if we’re not good?’

Mac doesn’t say anything for long enough that Dennis starts to get seriously worried he’s going to throw up all over Mac’s stupid fucking slogan t-shirt, but then he leans forward a little, his eyes all wide and awed like he can’t believe what he’s just heard.

‘Dude,’ he breathes. ‘That is stone-cold the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.’

Dennis squirms, eyes darting away from the look on Mac’s face even as some freakish, frantic part of him is committing it to memory.

‘Well, don’t get used to it,’ he says shortly. His hands are shaking and he shoves them in between his thighs to try and stop it. ‘And you haven’t answered my question.’

‘Dennis,’ Mac says, wondering. ‘Of course it’s important, it’s the _most_ important, I –’

He gives up on phrasing after that, taking Dennis’s face in both hands and kissing him softly, making a small sound of desperation against his mouth. Dennis kisses him back with a gasp, scrabbling around so he can get closer, pressing forward into Mac’s space until Mac wraps both arms around him and just _holds_ him there, tight and warm and safe. Dennis gives a half-sob, throwing his arms around Mac’s shoulders and breathing in the scent of him, burrowing into his beautiful heat. Mac grips him so tightly that Dennis gasps but still he can’t help squirming around trying to get closer, every hair on his body rising to Mac’s touch. Mac makes this gorgeous groaning noise into his mouth and pulls Dennis into his lap, shifting their limbs around until Dennis is straddling him and they’re pressed so close together that Dennis shudders to a halt with contentment, helpless.

They sit there just panting for a moment, clinging to each other. Dennis drops soft kisses over Mac’s cheeks, his mouth, his eyes while Mac’s hands stroke over his back, pulling up his shirt so he can touch Dennis’s bare skin. Dennis closes his eyes, burrowing into Mac’s neck with a sigh of relief. Mac shivers at the brush of Dennis’s eyelashes, wet and matted.

‘I’ve got you,’ he says, his voice low and soothing as he rubs soothing circles over Dennis’s back. Dennis’s hands tighten on Mac’s shoulders.

‘I wanted you all the time,’ he mumbles into Mac’s neck, and Mac’s whole body stills. Dennis takes a shaky breath, screwing his eyes shut tighter. ‘All the time. In North Dakota. I couldn’t figure it out. I didn’t know why. I’m sorry.’

Mac’s hands run up to the back of Dennis’s neck and over his jaw, encouraging him up gently until Dennis can see his face, and Mac’s fingers are stroking over Dennis’s cheeks.

‘It was so weird without you,’ Mac tells him, swallowing hard and giving a shaky half-laugh. ‘So fucking weird, dude. I just don’t – I don’t want you to go away again, _ever_ –’

‘I’m not going to,’ Dennis tells him, nearly stumbling over the words. ‘I won’t, I won’t, I promise –’

‘Okay,’ Mac mutters, kissing him again, hard and messy until Dennis is making small sounds into his mouth. He pulls back, cradling Dennis’s face in his hands and kissing his cheeks, the trembling corner of his mouth. ‘I know, Den, I believe you.’

‘You’re so full of shit,’ Dennis mumbles, sniffing. Mac’s brow wrinkles in confusion. ‘No, not about that, I meant – how can you say you aren’t good for me, Mac? How can you even think that?’

‘Dennis,’ Mac says in an unbearably gentle voice, and then seems at a loss for words after all. He kisses Dennis softly but for a long time, until Dennis forgets to ask him what came at the end of that sentence, until he forgets to say anything else at all.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> told you i'd fix it!!!! 
> 
> a slightly shorter chapter next time and then we're all wrapped up. thank you so much to everyone who's left a comment or kudos, it really does mean a lot to me, and to everyone who's just enjoyed the fic as well!! love u all <3


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)

**_Three months later_ **

‘Five fucking a.m., Dennis? Are you kidding me?’

Dennis wrinkles his nose and pulls a pillow over his head, ignoring the beeping of the alarm.

‘Oh no, you don’t,’ he hears Mac’s voice in the background, before the pillow is cruelly ripped from his grasp. He moans, loud and croaky with sleep. ‘Yeah, bitch. How do you like that?’

‘What?’ Dennis mumbles. He buries his face in his arms. ‘What is _wrong_ with you?’

‘What’s wrong with _me_?’ Mac asks in disbelief. ‘What the hell is wrong with _you_ , Dennis? Their plane doesn’t arrive until three in the afternoon and you set the alarm for five in the fucking morning?’

‘Lots to do, Mac,’ Dennis mutters into his arm, eyes still closed. ‘Lots to get ready.’

‘There’s nothing to get ready!’ Mac says loudly. He sounds like he’s throwing his hands up in the air. Dennis can just picture the look on his face, and it makes him grin into his arm. ‘Because you kept us up until _two_ making sure everything was perfect, Dennis!’

‘Then it can be perfecter,’ Dennis tells him with a sigh, shoving his face more firmly into his arm. ‘More perfect.’

‘I’ll show you more perfect,’ he hears Mac mutter before he rips the covers off, exposing Dennis to a rush of cold air. Dennis curls up into a ball on the mattress and makes an angry noise, cracking one eye open so he can glare at Mac. ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought. Get up, asshole.’

‘I hate you,’ Dennis tries to spit at him, but the effect is somewhat lessened by the fact that a yawn interrupts him halfway through. He levers himself up with a groan in exact proportion to his disgust at this entire situation and scowls in Mac’s general direction. They went to bed at two but Dennis didn’t sleep until maybe three at the earliest; he probably looks like a complete bag of shit. It’s completely unfair that even with bedhead, a frown the size of a Midwestern state and pillow creases patterning his face, Mac still looks irritatingly touchable. He hasn’t even fucking _showered_ yet _._ ‘I hate you more than anything in the entire world, ever.’

‘Not what you were saying last night,’ Mac throws over his shoulder as he heads to the kitchen. ‘Now get your ass out of bed. If I have to be up, so do you.’

\---

In hindsight, the five a.m. wake up call probably had been a little extreme. But Dennis had been unable to stop himself at the time, even as exhausted as they’d been after readying Brian Junior’s room the day before, fuzzy-eyed and slurring their words – five a.m. had seemed reasonable, considering how high the stakes. He’d wanted to leave enough space for things to go wrong, and then to fix them again, before they left for the airport. He wanted time to get ready.

‘You don’t need to become a different person overnight, Den,’ Mac had told him sleepily as they were drifting off, his arm slung contentedly over Dennis’s waist, like he could read Dennis’s goddamn mind. ‘You’re his dad. He already likes you.’

Dennis stared at the opposite wall, saying nothing. It was freakish sometimes, how easily Mac could pluck Dennis’s anxieties straight from the stew inside his skull, shake them off, show him just how small they really were. The worst thing was how little effort Mac put into it; he wasn’t lying there going crazy about it, wracking his brain trying to figure out the most helpful thing to say. He just knew.

‘I know,’ Dennis had told him eventually, nettled. ‘I just want him to have a good time while he’s here, that’s all.’

‘And he will,’ Mac yawned, right next to Dennis’s ear. Dennis wriggled in protest at the hot puff of air and Mac made a disgruntled noise, arm tightening around Dennis’s waist. The tension holding Dennis’s body rigid softened a little, then. Some part of him is still nervously waiting for the disproportionate comfort of Mac’s arms around him to degrade and turn into something he takes for granted, but it hasn’t yet. Maybe it never will. Sometimes he thinks if you dug out the rest of what’s between them, you’d find that at the base of it all: Mac holding him, and Dennis letting himself be held. ‘He’s got both of us to entertain him, how could he not?’

‘Remember he doesn’t know lots of stuff yet,’ Dennis reminded Mac, even as Mac’s breathing was evening out, his face going slack against the back of Dennis’s neck. ‘I mean it. When you talk to him for real, you’ll see. Children know _nothing,_ Mac. Absolutely nothing. It’s unbelievable.’

‘I’ve met children before,’ Mac mumbled on a sleepy sigh.

‘Not this one,’ Dennis said quietly. ‘Well, you have, but – not really. Not like this.’

Mac shook himself and sighed against Dennis’s neck, squeezing him around the waist gently.

‘Dennis,’ he said, in his most patient voice. ‘I’ve met him. I like him, he’s a sweet kid. I’m gonna get to know him better, and he’s gonna be excited to see you, and it’s all gonna be fine.’

Dennis hesitated, laundry list of objections on the tip of his tongue. But in the end there was only so much worrying out loud he could do that he hadn’t done a thousand times already, and Mac’s body was a warm and solid weight at his back, and it was _really_ fucking late.

‘Okay,’ he said.

‘Okay,’ Mac had sighed, giving him one last squeeze. ‘Now for the love of God, can we go to sleep?’

Dennis stands in the shower the next morning regretting that he hadn’t just knocked himself out rather than lie awake while Mac snored into his neck softly, but he can smell coffee drifting in from the kitchen and even just the scent is enough to perk something up in his hindbrain. Mac comes into the bathroom while Dennis is still towelling off to hand him a mug, and Dennis takes a grateful sip while Mac pecks him on the cheek, slinging an arm around Dennis’s waist. Dennis closes his eyes for a second while he drinks, trying to resituate himself in this reality – the one where he hasn’t fucked up Brian’s visit yet – rather than getting caught up in the dozen disaster scenarios his last two brain cells are insisting on running.

‘Man, your thoughts are _loud_ this morning,’ Mac observes.

‘Tell me about it,’ Dennis sighs. ‘You should try being in here with them. Stop pawing at me, I’m not even wearing my make up yet.’

He turns his face away but Mac keeps his arms firmly wrapped around Dennis’s waist, pressing little kisses to his neck instead. Dennis watches them in the mirror, the contrast of Mac’s deep tan with his own paler skin, and experiences a slightly nauseating pang at the reminder of his staggering good fortune. Things could so easily have turned out differently. None of this – the coffee, the morning kiss, Mac’s sheer bloody-minded insistence that this visit is going to go well – none of it was guaranteed.

But it _is_ right. He wasn’t lying, when he told Mac he believed that. He thinks, after three months together, that Mac is finally starting to let himself believe it too.

Dennis tries not to let any of this show on his face – it wouldn’t do for Mac to get complacent – but Mac meets his gaze in their reflection and smiles like he sees it all anyway, propping his chin on Dennis’s collarbone. Dennis rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t try particularly hard to get away.

‘I don’t know why you always think that’s going to put me off,’ Mac says, sounding genuinely bemused. He kisses him again, right on the edge of a nerve so that Dennis shivers. ‘I know what you look like, dude. I’ve known you for nearly thirty years.’

‘You _think_ you know what I look like,’ Dennis corrects. ‘Sorry to inform you that my cheekbones aren’t actually as prominent as they seem.’

‘Maybe not, but your eyelashes are like, the longest I’ve ever seen on a guy,’ Mac shoots back almost defiantly, words softened by the way he’s still planting kisses along Dennis’s neck, trailing across his shoulder.

‘That’s just the mascara,’ Dennis says absently. ‘Didn’t you ever get curious when you were a kid? Try any of it?’

‘No,’ Mac says, peering down into Dennis’s offered make up bag a little warily. ‘I’m not like you, though.’

‘Not like me how?’ Dennis asks, shoulders going a little stiff.

‘Pretty,’ Mac says simply, and kisses him once on the lips before he kicks off his sweatpants and gets in the shower.

\---

It had taken Dennis a long time to tell Mandy about what happened with Mac, long enough that Dennis could tell it was making Mac nervous, even if he wasn’t saying it. It was in the way he laughed when Dennis made jokes about it, turning his face down and away, something complicated in the set of his mouth.

‘Look, it’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just that she’s going to gloat,’ he’d told Mac flatly over dinner, picking at his food. Meeting Mac after he’d been to the gym had the advantage of seeing him alternately pumped and sleepy-cute depending on the extent of his workout, but the disadvantage that all the restaurants within walking distance of the gym sucked. This diner, like all diners, smells like ketchup and salt and the grease hanging in the air makes Dennis feel slightly nauseous at all times, but it serves these giant milkshakes that Mac likes and which actually work out more like regular size after Dennis stops pretending he doesn’t want to share. Sometimes he doesn’t even use a different straw. It’s so disgustingly intimate that he refuses to take responsibility for it; he’s still cautiously skirting around the realisation that they might have become one of Those Couples, and he doesn’t want to look it full in the face just yet. ‘She’s going to gloat and say I told you so, and scream down the phone at me, and I don’t want to deal with any of that right now. I’ve heard it from enough people already, Mac. I am done outsourcing opinions on our relationship.’

‘She isn’t going to gloat,’ Mac had rolled his eyes, slinging his arm over the back of the booth they’re sharing. It still took Dennis a second to adjust to moves like that, at that point – to remind himself that he was allowed to lean back into the warmth of Mac’s body, get comfortable there. It had only been a few weeks and there was still that hook in his stomach, the panicked twinge that flared when Mac got too close in public. But it always just – plateaued, somehow, when Dennis gave himself the chance to let it, smoothed out by the gentle rub of Mac’s fingers over the back of his neck. It wasn’t so different to how they’d been before, not really; Mac had always chosen the closest seat he could to Dennis, made the best of whatever proximity he was allowed. It was just that now Dennis was finally choosing it back. ‘Mandy’s like the nicest person in the entire world, Dennis, she’s just going to congratulate you a million times.’

‘And scream,’ Dennis had repeated pointedly. ‘She’s going to scream, Mac. I can practically hear it now, echoing back to us from the future. She’s got a fucking _time-travelling scream_ , bro, I’m telling you.’

‘We already got through telling Rex,’ Mac reminded him soothingly, scrunching his fingertips up in the curls at the back of Dennis’s neck. It was getting too long, he needed a haircut, but – he liked the way Mac gripped him there, careful and firm. That was something else he wasn’t looking in the face just yet. ‘And that had to be the worst one, right?’

‘Rex doesn’t count and you know it,’ Dennis said, giving up on pretending he was going to finish his fries and leaning his head on the back of the booth with a sigh, letting Mac’s hand cushion him. He closed his eyes and massaged his temples, feeling the rush of a sugar headache coming on. He made a mental note to find a substitute for alcohol that wasn’t coke or ice cream in a glass before he started being able to hear colours. ‘He already kind of knew about us anyway ‘cause of that whole – thing. Uh. And anyway, the guy’s a freak! Who reacts like that? Who gives their ex a hug when they hear news like that? Nobody’s _that_ nice.’

‘He got kind of teary, too,’ Mac had reminded him again, which was the element of the whole deal that made Dennis wonder if Rex really _had_ descended on them from a higher plane of existence because really, _who did that,_ and the grin in Mac’s voice said he knew it. Dennis ignored the bait and did not deign to glare the way Mac clearly wanted him to. ‘He’s just a really, really good guy, Den.’

‘Freakish,’ Dennis said without opening his eyes. ‘Unhinged.’

It really had worked out for the best, though. Dennis could admit that much to himself, considering that Rex and Mac had to work together now. It wasn’t much – just a few sessions a week at the gym while Mac figured out if he really wanted to do the whole personal trainer thing, now that he’d cut back his hours at the bar. It meant kind of an antisocial work schedule but then so had running security for Paddy’s and anyway, Mac got to yell at people as part of his _job_ now. They called it _motivational._ Couldn’t really ask for a better fit than that.

Rex had somehow managed to pretzel the inherent awkwardness of this entire situation into a boon when Mac had told him about Dennis – something about it being easier for them to keep in touch as friends.

‘Friends,’ Dennis had rolled the word around his mouth when Mac came home and told him. His eyes narrowed slightly. Was it possible that Rex was secretly an evil genius who was entirely capable of playing the long game? Literally every interaction they had ever had indicated that this was not the case, but on the other hand – _friends?_ After Dennis had stolen Mac back from him? He should be gnashing his teeth and rending his garments – whatever that entailed – not congratulating him. The whole thing felt off. ‘Hmm.’

‘I know that face,’ Mac had warned, pointing his empty water bottle at Dennis with an intent look. ‘Don’t get all pissy with me about this. Who am I coming home to, huh?’

Dennis had done his level best that night to remind Mac exactly who and why that was, and he hadn’t heard any complaints. Lots of loud noises, but definitely no complaints.

Anyway when Dennis eventually did tell Mandy about Mac, a month or so after their conversation in the diner, she hadn’t screamed. She’d gone really, really quiet, so quiet Dennis wondered if they’d been cut off.

‘Mandy?’ he’d asked cautiously. ‘You still there?’

‘Yeah,’ she said in a voice unmistakably full of tears, which made Dennis sit up a little straighter. ‘Oh, gosh! Sorry to get so emotional, it’s just – Mac’s welcome to come and visit any time, the two of you – just anytime at all, you know that, right? So long as you give me enough time to get the house in order. Really, Dennis. He’s always welcome.’

‘Um,’ Dennis had said, having trouble speaking through the lump in his throat. ‘Yeah, sure, that’s – thank you, Mandy. God. That’s – yeah.’

‘I’m really happy for you,’ she said, and she sounded it. Dennis stoically avoided looking at Mac, who was sat messing around on his phone on the other side of the room and kept looking up at him with one judgmental eyebrow raised.

‘Oh, Christ,’ Dennis remembered saying faintly, and then not much more after that: she’d put Brian on the phone so Dennis could speak to him, and he’d asked in his little warbling baby speak if he could come and visit. Dennis had blurted out yes before he could even really think about it, missing Brian so much in that moment that if he’d been dropped into Dennis’s arms right then, he might not have been able to let go.

‘Brian’s coming to visit,’ were the first words Dennis said when he got off the phone, and Mac didn’t even get a chance to reply before Dennis was dashing to the bathroom to throw up.

And now here they are, driving to the airport, and Dennis is having trouble remembering why he ever said yes to this, no matter how cute Brian’s voice is on the phone, all bitty with half-learned language and nicknames.

‘We’re going to be late,’ he says curtly. ‘I knew we should have set off sooner. Why are you driving so slowly?’

‘We’re not gonna be late,’ Mac says in his soothing voice, which has an almost Pavlovian effect on Dennis now that Mac is learning sports massage therapy; it’s a deadly combination, although sadly not applicable in the context of moving traffic. He puts his hand on Dennis’s knee and squeezes instead, and Dennis exhales a long, deep breath. ‘We’ve got like three hours yet til they land, Den, it’s going to be fine.’

‘Okay, fine, stop,’ Dennis snaps. ‘I’m not a child.’

‘No,’ Mac rolls his eyes, ‘I’m aware of that, Dennis.’

‘I just,’ Dennis starts, trying to verbalise the jumble of emotions fucking up everything inside his rib cage. He wants someone to puncture him, let the clamour out. ‘I just want it to be perfect.’

‘It’s probably not gonna be perfect,’ Mac says, really helpfully. ‘But don’t panic – it’s not gonna be perfect because just, kids, right? They’re really messy, and they get stuff everywhere, and they’re always sticky –’

‘Not as sticky when you don’t cover them in shoe polish,’ Dennis retorts.

‘That was one time,’ Mac says loudly. ‘ _One time_ , Dennis. Literally over ten years ago. Anyway, my point is, maybe if you think about it like that then it’ll be easier? Like, it’s not going to be perfect because kids fuck stuff up, so maybe that should take some of the pressure off?’

Dennis frowns, thinking about this.

‘What if I fuck stuff up?’ he asks in a smaller voice than he’d like.

Mac squeezes his knee.

‘Easy. I’ll be there to back you up, buddy. We’ve got this.’

Dennis turns to look at him, catches the easy smile Mac throws his way before turning back to the traffic.

\---

Mac had found him another Range Rover, somehow, about a month ago. He’d led Dennis outside the bar to see it with his hands over Dennis’s eyes, excited as a little kid, although the surprise was kind of ruined because the gang were chewing him out about it the whole way there.

‘This totally flaunts the terms of the agreement, dude!’ Charlie had protested as Dennis stood there, stunned, his face in his hands. It was perfect, parked on the curb waiting for him, all shiny and pretty: it was like new. It was his baby, even though he knew it couldn’t be, not really – but it looked just like her, just perfect. He had no idea how Mac had done it.

‘But you don’t even have any money,’ he’d said helplessly, seemingly to no one as the bickering continued around him. ‘I don’t understand. Did you steal it? Is this a stolen car, Mac? Are you giving me a felony?’

‘We all signed it, remember?’ Charlie was saying, pointing at Mac belligerently. ‘No chipping in on a new car if he came back, that was article 23! The Range Rover was _due punishment,_ dude –’

‘Yeah,’ Mac said easily. He wasn’t looking at Charlie. He was watching Dennis, a quietly satisfied smile on his face. ‘But I’m already breaking the agreement by banging him, right? So I figured why not go the whole hog?’

Dennis had frowned, momentarily distracted from the Range Rover.

‘You had an agreement none of you would bang me?’ he asked, blinking as Mac slipped an arm around his waist. He leaned into the heat of Mac’s body and completed the hug, closing his eyes for a second and laying his face against Mac’s neck so he felt rather than heard Mac’s answer.

‘Yeah,’ Mac said quietly, as Dee and Charlie’s complaints faded into the background. ‘But don’t worry, man: when I signed it, I had my fingers crossed behind my back.’

Mac seems to be under the impression that having bought the car – through undoubtedly nefarious means which he still won’t reveal to Dennis – gives him license to drive it, which is patently ridiculous. Everybody knows that the Range Rover belongs to Dennis, has always belonged to Dennis, and always will. It doesn’t matter who actually sunk the money into the damn thing. Dennis is grateful for Mac in every way it is possible to be grateful for another human being, but Jesus Christ, there are limits.

‘But this isn’t the same car,’ Karen had reminded him just last week, a note of patience in her voice than Dennis would swear she didn’t used to possess. When he’d first started going to see her, he was fairly certain she only kept him on the books because she wanted to write a paper or two on him; why else would she be taking such copious notes during their sessions? He thinks he’s been good for her, he really does. He’s definitely increased her capacity to handle aggravation, and he’s probably made her more dedicated to her work. Really, she should be thankful that it’s taking him months to find a new therapist in Philly, because it means she gets to benefit from his company for even longer. He’ll find someone else eventually, and then she can write all the articles she wants. He just hasn’t found quite the right fit yet.

‘No,’ Dennis had agreed. ‘It’s not. But in _spirit_ –’

‘I really don’t see the problem with the two of you sharing a car that Mac bought for you,’ Karen continued, while Dennis rolled his eyes. ‘My greater concern is where and how Mac obtained it. Didn’t you say you thought –’

‘Oh, man, is that the time? I’ve got a – thing,’ Dennis had muttered before he rang off, fooling exactly no one: Karen’s got sharper, too, since Dennis first met her. That particular adjustment he could do without.  

Mac driving the Range Rover does have the one advantage that Dennis wasn’t in charge of getting them to the airport today, though. Although by the time they pull into the parking lot, he’s not sure this was a perk after all: no distractions just meant he had time to stress the entire fuck out about everything _but_ the traffic.

‘What if he doesn’t like zoos?’ he asks Mac as they get out of the car. He swallows hard, staring at the airport. Looks really fucking big from here. Bigger than he remembers. ‘What if he doesn’t like any of the stuff we’ve planned for him, Mac? What if he’s scared of the animals? What if he’s allergic and I don’t even know about it? What if –’

‘Dude,’ Mac interrupts, putting a hand in the small of his back and shepherding him gently in the direction of the automatic entry doors. ‘Mandy would have told you if he was allergic. Or you would have, like, noticed at some point. You know, during the six months you lived in North Dakota. And anyway, have you ever actually met a human child? They all love the zoo, man, it’s a whole thing. I saw it on TV.’

‘I’d really prefer it if you’d stop taking parenting advice from the television, Mac,’ Dennis snaps. ‘Or at the very least, stop telling me about it.’

‘Okay,’ Mac says on a deep breath, steering him toward Starbucks as soon as they get in the doors. The huge ARRIVALS sign hangs in front of Dennis like a fucking scythe ready to drop. He gulps down a desperate breath. ‘We’ve got nearly two hours until they land, and in the interests of us not killing each other before they get here, I’m gonna get you some peppermint tea, okay? Jesus Christ.’

‘Whatever,’ Dennis mutters, but he sits down in the armchair Mac pushes him towards and he only checks his phone seven times while Mac queues up for them, as if Mandy’s going to have texted him since they took off. He tries to stop his foot tapping. It’s just. There’s so much that could go wrong. There are so many things he could do, to ruin this.

‘Hey, Dennis,’ Mac whispers when he brings back their drinks, and nods towards a guy in jeans and an honest to God trilby sat a few tables away, scribbling in a notebook. ‘What about that guy, huh?’

‘No,’ Dennis says dismissively, pulling the lid off his cup so he can dump sweetener in the tea. ‘No. God. Are you serious? For a gay man, you have absolutely terrible gaydar. On the basis of that hat _alone_ –’

‘You put way too much emphasis on headgear, dude,’ Mac complains, sitting down and surveying the rest of the café. His eyes brighten at a skinny, bewildered-looking guy wearing Converse and a Madonna t shirt. ‘What about that guy?’

‘Too easy,’ Dennis tells him, smiling into his cup when Mac frowns. He’s just mad because Dennis always get it right; every single time they’ve played Guess The Gay, Mac has placed his bets on the skinny white hipsters who clearly listen to too much acoustic guitar and pretend they’re good at channelling their feelings in order to get girls into bed. Dennis knows that schtick so well he could work it in his sleep – no way you’re going to identify a gay guy that way. His method is much simpler: he just notes the heads that turn when Mac walks into the room.

‘You feeling okay, man?’ Mac asks him quietly when he’s halfway through his tea. He sticks his foot out and nudges it against Dennis’s ankle, pushes until his boot touches the bare skin of Dennis’s lower leg. It shouldn’t be comforting but it is, anyway; Dennis makes a mumbling noise and Mac grins into his own drink. Dennis feels his cheeks flush with some wretched combination of happiness and embarrassment. You wouldn’t have to have good gaydar to recognise what’s happening here. You’d only have to catch the look on Mac’s face.

By the time Mandy and Brian’s flight arrives, Dennis has cycled back round through anxiety and entropy a couple more times and landed somewhere south of petrified. His hands are shaking when he pushes up from the armchair.

‘Tea’s wearing off, huh?’ Mac asks, widening his eyes innocently when Dennis turns to glare at him.

‘Shut up,’ Dennis says tightly, then swallows. ‘I can’t do this, Mac, I’m changing my mind. I can’t. God, what was I thinking? This whole idea was insane.’

‘You’re so full of it,’ Mac tells him, rolling his eyes and pushing Dennis forward gently in the direction of arrivals. He leaves his hand there, warm and solid at the base of Dennis’s back. Dennis envisions the warmth seeping through his spine to his stomach, lulling the tendrils of fear there. ‘Just try not to cry too hard, okay? You don’t want to scare the kid.’

‘Oh my god, shut up,’ Dennis says again, shooting Mac an appalled look. His throat closes up as they hit the terminal and passengers start to stream off the plane and of course it’s a lost cause, in the end: he’s tearing up in anticipation before he even sees them. Mandy looks exhausted, carrying a rucksack and somehow also managing to heft Brian on her hip.

‘Oh, fuck,’ Dennis whispers, lifting a hand to his face. Mac draws closer to him and takes his other hand, weaving their fingers firmly together. Dennis lets out a hard breath. This is it, now. Time to see what they can do.

Mandy catches sight of them and waves excitedly, her whole face transforming as she points out Dennis. Brian sniffs and rubs his face, giving his own grumpy wave as Mandy starts walking towards them. Dennis takes a deep breath as he swipes at the wetness around his eyes, then realises Mac is watching him.

‘What?’ he asks. Mac shakes his head, soft grin playing around his mouth.

‘Showtime,’ he says, and squeezes Dennis’s hand.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's all there is! thank you so so much to everyone who's commented and kudos'd and enjoyed the fic, it means so much to me to have put it out in the world and received such a positive response. i started writing this immediately after i finished publishing mac's fic and it's taken me nearly a year to finish it, but i'm proud that i have. and in time for s13, nonetheless! see you all there <3

**Author's Note:**

> All comments and kudos are appreciated! Come and yell about macdennis with me on tumblr, where I have the same handle.


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